


The Long Way Down

by saltsanford



Series: Miles to Go [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Missing Scene, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 46,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5876191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsanford/pseuds/saltsanford
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no backing out of a contract with Project Freelancer, no matter how many teammates it fractures. Missing moment, from Wash’s integration with Epsilon to being declared unfit for duty. COMPLETE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Ghost

His name is David Fletcher and he has been to twenty-three states in the continental United States. The state of Washington is not one of them.

He arrives at the spaceport with nothing but his name and the clothes on his back, and waits in a room filled with starlight to have both of these things taken away as well. The clothes go first, jeans and a leather jacket exchanged for fatigues and a black t-shirt. Armor, he is told, will come later.

When the man he knows only as the Counselor regards him and says, “David, you have been assigned codename Agent Washington,” the first thing David thinks is, absurdly, _but I’ve never been to Washington state._

The Counselor raises an eyebrow when David voices this out loud. “Is it important for you to feel a connection with your codename, Agent Washington?”

“It’s not important, it’s just…why did you choose _that_ state?”

“Excuse me?”

David shifts a little, unsure of why this question seems so vital. “Well, you’re obviously not choosing our names based on where we’re from, so…what is it? Are you going in alphabetical order? Or is it random?”

“Does that matter?”

David wonders if the Counselor has ever sounded anything other than mildly curious in his entire life. He sighs. “Never mind.”

“Very well, then.” The Counselor consults his datapad. “A transport ship will arrive to take you to the _Mother of Invention_ in approximately thirty minutes. I suggest you take the time to prepare yourself.”

“Prepare myself for what, exactly?”

The Counselor pauses on his way out, looking back over his shoulder. “For the journey, Agent Washington. We’ve miles to go.”

He leaves and David is left staring out the window. It is cold to the touch, and feels good against the heat of his palm. He can just make out his reflection in the window, the blue of his eyes filled with spangled starlight. “Your name is Agent Washington,” he tells himself quietly.

It is the first of many reminders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL ABOARD THE ANGST TRAIN O_O


	2. 1.1: Snow

When Agent Washington wakes up, it is to the sound of singing, of all things.

He climbs his way back to consciousness, one rung at a time, blinking the bleary sleep from his eyes. Singing. _Well, more like humming,_ he thinks as he wakes up a little further. Still, that can’t be right. The only other person in the room is Maine, and-

“Good morning, Agent Washington.”

“Hnnngghh,” Wash mutters groggily, scrubbing his hands over his face and squinting towards the voice. Maine is across the room, dozing on top of his perfectly made bunk, fully armored except for the helmet resting next to his bed. Sigma is standing on top of the helmet, looking cheerfully over towards Wash. “W’time is it?”

“It is approximately 0800.”

Wash groans and pulls his pillow over his face. “Then why are you waking me up? It’s _early_.”

Sigma still sounds oddly cheerful. “0800 can hardly be considered early, Agent Washington. By military standards, one could say it is, in fact, late.”

“So why aren’t you waking Maine up, too?”

“Agent Maine hasn’t been sleeping well. I thought it best to let him get a bit more rest.”

Wash peeks out from under the pillow. “He’s still having trouble sleeping?”

“I’m afraid so.”

This information, coupled with Sigma’s incessant humming, makes it impossible to get back to sleep. Wash sighs heavily, climbing to his feet and snapping on his armor as quietly as he can.

“Are you ready?”

Wash pauses at the door to glance back at Sigma. “Ready for what?”

Sigma’s avatar registers surprise. “For your implantation tomorrow, of course.”

All at once, Wash is wide awake, and he leaves without answering Sigma’s question. Implantation. Tomorrow.

_Fuck._

He abruptly switches directions, making his way to the infirmary. The doors slide open soundlessly, and he heads to the row of beds in the back where Carolina is still unconscious. York is dozing in the chair next to her, his chin propped up on his fist.

Carolina is unbearably still, her face so soft and smooth that Wash wishes he could pretend she was just sleeping. Her hair has been let down from its ponytail, fanning around her forehead like flames licking the pillow. He smooths a gloved hand over her forehead, brushing her hair back and feeling utterly useless.

“Tell me what to do, boss,” he whispers, knowing that she cannot hear him, knowing that she will not stir. Her scream from the other day echoes in his ears like a warning, forming itself into vague, half-formed thoughts: _don’t do it, run away, get out now, while you still can._

Wash catches a flash of purple in his periphery, and turns to see North in the observatory. He backtracks to stand next to his friend, who has a helmet tucked under his arm and is watching Carolina and York with muted dismay. “No change, huh?”

North sighs. “Nothing. They’re…” he hesitates. “They’re starting to use the word coma.”

 _Coma._ Wash stares at Carolina, her face more peaceful than he’s ever seen it. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

“I do.” North sounds so confident that Wash pulls his gaze from Carolina to stare. North shrugs. “She always has been before.”

“She has,” Wash agrees slowly. He can’t argue with that, and yet... “What happened, North? During the fight. The Director came in, and yelled a name, and you all…freaked out.”

He hasn’t been able to get a straight answer to this question out of anyone, and for a moment, he doesn’t think he’s going to now either. “I’m not sure,” North says slowly, and Wash sighs. “No, really, Wash. One minute everything was fine, and the next, Theta was…well, I’ve never felt him quite so upset.”

“Upset about _what_ , though?”

North shrugs again. “I don’t know. Theta doesn’t, either. It has something to do with…that name, but it doesn’t seem to hold any meaning for Theta.”

Wash doesn’t have to wonder at North’s reluctance to say the name out loud. _Allison_. “Did it hurt?” He winces a little at the implied weakness in the question. “I just meant…”

“Yes,” North says, unashamed. “It hurt a lot. But it’s the only thing that has so far, Wash. The implantation itself didn’t even hurt. Just a few headaches after.”

Wash nods, staring at Carolina again until North drops a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. You don’t have to do this, you know. No one will think less of you.”

“I _do_ have to do this, though. I signed a contract. We all did. They’re not going to let me out of it.”

“Do you _want_ out?”

“Well, I don’t want out of the Project or anything, but…” Wash hesitates. “I’m not so sure I want an A.I. anymore. I mean, Theta seems great, but...”

He trails off, unsure of how to vocalize his thoughts. The idea of an A.I. had never appealed to him, although Delta and Theta had both made him think the whole process might not be so bad. But Maine’s headaches, coupled with the incident with Carolina, were causing him to revert back to his initial gut feeling. The way she’d _screamed_ …

“Hey. Just go talk to them, Wash. They let Carolina give Sigma to Maine, remember?”

Wash brightens a little. “That’s true.”

“I’m sure no one will blame you, after what just happened.”

“Yeah.” He glances back at Carolina. “Alright. Just…let me know when she wakes up, okay?”

“I will.” North smiles. “I’m under orders from half the ship to let them know when she’s up. Go on, I’ll find you.”

**** 

Wash doesn’t go to find the Director right away. He hits up the gym first, which helps him sweat away only a bit of his anxiety, and grabs some food at the cafeteria. _It’s not stalling,_ he tells himself. He had a routine to keep up, after all. Stalling would imply that he was dreading the upcoming conversation. The Director was sure to understand. No need to be nervous.

Still, he spends five minutes fidgeting outside the door to the Director’s office before knocking. “Who is it?”

“Agent Washington, sir.”

“Do you have an appointment, Agent Washington?”

“Well, no, but….”

“Then make one, and go away. I’m very busy.”

Wash steels himself. “It’s, uh. It’s important, sir.”

The Director’s voice is growing more exasperated by the minute. “Agent—“

“It’s about the implantation.”

There’s a moment of silence, broken only by the shuffling of papers, before the Director sighs. “Enter.”

The door swings open soundlessly under his touch, and Wash enters the room. He’s a little shocked at just how exhausted the Director looks, green eyes dulled somewhat by the shadows purpling around them. Wash stands in front of his desk stiffly for a moment, hoping that the Director will tell him to sit.

He does not, just blinks at Wash expectantly. “So?” he asks when Wash says nothing. “Do you have concerns regarding your implantation?”

“Well,” Wash hedges. “The whole process just seems to be getting…risky. I mean, with Maine, and then Carolina—”

“What about Maine?”

“His headaches, sir,” Wash says, surprised. “Did you not know?”

There is no change in expression on the Director’s face. “I know. What _about_ them?”

“They look like they really suck, is what,” Wash snaps before he can stop himself. “And they’re starting to say Carolina’s in a coma—”

The Director shoves back his chair at that, and for a moment Wash think he’s going to stride over to him. Instead, he starts to pace, back and forth behind his desk. “Get to the point, Agent.”

“I don’t want to do it,” Wash says, and some of the tension leaves his body just at getting the words out. “I don’t want an A.I.”

The Director ceases in his pacing before turning to face Wash. “You signed a contract.”

His voice is neither threatening nor mild: it is nothing more or less than a simple statement of the facts. “I know that,” Wash say slowly. “But I was hoping that I could get out. Of the contract.”

“No.”

The simplicity of his answers stuns Wash. “No? But…but Carolina was allowed to give up her A.I. for Maine—“

“Are you offering to give your A.I. up to someone?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then I’m afraid I don’t see the point in discussing this any further.” The Director is already turning back to his desk, and Wash feels a wave of anger pulse through him.

“Sir,” he says, forcing his voice to stay calm and measured. “I’m not trying to break my whole contract with Project Freelancer. Just…just the part about the A.I.”

“To break one part is to break the whole, Agent Washington,” says the Director calmly. “The _answer_ is no. When you agreed to be a part of this project, you agreed to be implanted with an A.I. You will report for implantation tomorrow at 1200. Is that clear?”

 _He's not wearing armor,_ Wash thinks, the knot of anger in his head pulsing viciously. _He’s not wearing any armor, and you are. You could overpower him, you could find a way off this ship and--_

“Yes, sir,” he says instead, and turns on his heel to leave without being dismissed.

*****

“He said no! I mean, can you _believe_ that? He actually said _no!_ Can you believe—”

“Funnily enough, we _can_ , Wash.” York rolls his eyes over at North, and Wash frowns.

“Hey. I saw that, you know. You’re not as sut-sub-subtley as you think you are—“

“Alright, no more whiskey for you, chap.” Wyoming leans across North and wrests the bottle away from Wash, taking a long swig. “Blagh. Who the bloody hell brought in this piss water?”

“Hey,” South snaps from where she’s leaning against the wall, scowling. “It’s _booze_ , isn’t it? I didn’t complain when it was your turn to smuggle some onboard and you brought back a case of _cooking sherry_.”

“My dear South, if memory serves correctly, you did nothing _but_ complain over that frankly delicious sherry—”

“Well, _I’m_ not complaining,” Wash says, making a grab for the bottle again. Wyoming holds it high out of his reach. “C’mon, Wyoming, give it here…”

North sighs. “Wash, trust me, you don’t want to be hungover for your implantation tomorrow, especially since you’re already nervous.”

“Who said I was nervous?” Wash says defensively. “I’m not nervous. I just think it’s stupid to keep doing this when…”

He trails off, glancing at Carolina’s limp form. After leaving the Director’s office, he’d spent the rest of the day completing his scheduled training exercises and complaining to every sparring partner he had in between sets. The evening had found him in the infirmary again, before South had barged in with two bottles of bourbon and the staunch insistence that “Tradition shouldn’t die out just because half the team’s dead or unconscious.”

“Classy, South,” he’d said, but they’d pulled up chairs next to York and Carolina nonetheless, and thirty minutes later North and Wyoming had joined them.

“I’m not nervous,” Wash says again, thinking he should follow it up with something witty, but coming up short. He glances up at South suddenly. “Aren’t _you_ , though?”

“Oh my god, give him back the bottle, Wyoming,” South moans. “He needs to be _way_ drunker for this to be funny. So do I, come to that.”

She snags the bottle from Wyoming and takes a sip. Wash tugs on her t-shirt with a frown. “South. _Listen_ , South. If we _both_ go and tell the Director to go _fuck_ himself, then maybe—“

South bats his hand away. “How many times do I have to tell you that I _want_ an implantation?”

“But why, though?”

“I just do, okay?” She takes another drink. “Don’t gotta explain myself to you.”

“I know,” Wash mumbles. “I just—“

“Look, Wash, just suck it up, alright? North and York are all buddy-buddy with their A.I., what’s the problem?”

“Uh,” York gestures at Carolina. “Maybe _this_ is the problem?”

South glares at him. “Still don’t see you pulling Delta, though, now do I? Even after that little temper tantrum the A.I. threw the other day.”

They all fall silent for a while. Wash finds himself thinking back to the night before York’s implantation, and how different things had been. They all hadn’t been clustered around a bed in the infirmary, for one thing. Maine had laughed a lot that night, he remembered, and Connie had been—

Well. She had _been_ there.

_“They say he’s supposed to be real smart,” York had said, eyes bright. “My A.I. Think that’ll help with my infiltration skills?”_

_“God knows you need it,” Carolina’s tone had been teasing, cheeks flushed from the moonshine. None of them had had any idea where the moonshine came from, only that it was suddenly there, and that to leave it untouched would be a crying shame._

_“I won’t have to worry about my peripheral anymore,” York had continued. “The little guy should be able to compensate for my bad side, right?”_

_“Isn’t that the point?” South had asked. “That’s why you got bumped to the front of the line?”_

_“C’mon, South.” Wash had sidled up to her, ruffling her hair. “We’re gonna get our turn!”_

_She’d ruffled his hair back, harder than was necessary and said, “Since when are you such an optimist, rookie?”_

_Wash had shrugged, grinning. “Maybe it's not going to be so bad. These A.I. are supposed to make us all better, aren’t they?”_

“Look,” South says, and Wash snaps reluctantly back to the present. “She’s gonna be fine, alright? Jesus Christ, have a little faith.”

Wash is a bit surprised to see York perk up at that. “You think?”

South sighs loudly. “York, you need some _sleep_. In a real bed. And a fucking shower. I’ll stay with the princess for a few hours, just go get your panties untangled.”

“Cheers to that,” Wyoming says, reaching out to take the bottle from South again, and Wash can’t help but grin at the affronted look on York’s face.

It’s not a fun night, by any means, but Wash feels better, looking around at them all.

*****

It’s late by the time he makes his way back to his room, and he’s surprised to find Maine awake. “I thought you’d be asleep,” he says. “You should’ve come to hang out for a while.”

Maine shrugs, tapping a hand against his temple. _Headache._

Sigma materializes over his shoulder. “Agent Maine has been—”

“He has a headache, yeah, I got it,” Wash says, suddenly and spectacularly annoyed. “I know what he meant. You don’t need to translate everything, you know.”

“Agent Washington,” Sigma says, his tone pleasant and light, “the entire reason for my integration with Maine’s neural pathways was so that I may speak for him—“

“Translate for him.”

“Pardon?”

Wash flops onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. “Translate for him. Not speak. You don’t speak for him.”

Sigma falls silent—for, what Wash thinks a little sulkily, must be the first time ever. Wash sighs, turning to face him. “Sigma, can you…can you just log off for a few minutes, please? I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but…”

“Certainly,” says Sigma smoothly. “I understand. It is normal to seek comfort in one’s friends before what is sure to be a grueling ordeal.”

His avatar vanishes, leaving a deep shadow in place of the flame.

“Wow,” says Wash, blinking at the place where Sigma had been. “Was he…messing with me?”

Maine snorts a little, and Wash glances at him. _Probably._

“Maine,” Wash says suddenly. “Are you okay?”

The look Maine gives him is long and considering, before he taps his head again, more insistently.

“Headaches,” Wash sighs. “I know, but…I mean, are you really okay?”

This look is longer, sharper, more thoughtful. Maine finally nods, gesturing towards Wash.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he sighs. “Just…just nervous, is all.”

It feels good to finally admit it out loud. Maine gives him a half smile, holding out his fist, and Wash bumps it with a grin. Something about the simple gesture comforts him in a way that nothing else has all day.

Maine hits the lights soon after and Wash lays down, gazing out the tiny window at the foot of his bed. He’d chosen to have his head facing the door, so that he could see the stars outside the tiny window.

_“Sometimes I think I joined up just to see stars like this.”_

The memory of Connie whispers in his ear, and Wash can’t hide from her voice anymore. She’d hate this, he just knows it: the way the A.I. had screamed, Carolina in the hospital, the Director’s indifference, and, most of all, the fact that they were still moving ahead with the project. He feels slightly ashamed when he thinks of just what she’d have to say if he could tell her that he’d tried to back out, and had been told no.

 _“They shouldn’t force you. If they really had our best interests at heart, they wouldn’t force us into experimental_ surgery _.”_

_“We signed a contract—“_

_“And just look at where that contract has gotten us.”_

He shakes himself out of the imaginary conversation with a sigh. There is no Connie here, to make him think uncomfortable thoughts, no Carolina to pull him in the other direction, to talk to him about “the good of the project.” There is only the starlight flickering in through the window, and Maine tossing and turning across the room.

Wash sighs, closes his eyes and lets the thought that’s been in the back of his mind all day drift to the forefront: _you have no choice, Agent Washington._

He thinks of the wild, absurd thought he’d had back in the Director’s office, of finding a way off the ship. Even if he were able to pull such a thing off, where would he go? Who would he look for? What would he do?

_Nowhere, no one, nothing._

This ship, against all odds, had become…well. Not home, exactly, but it _might_ be, someday. These people, on the other hand, have long since gone from allies to teammates, from friends to family, and it is of them he thinks as he drifts off to sleep. They are fracturing, he knows, but they are still a _family_ , and he will not have to do this alone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New update schedule: I'm going to try to post a new chapter on Mondays AND Thursdays. I'd really like to get this done before season 14 of RVB starts up, and rumor has it that that's going to be in April. Since season 14 will essentially be comprised of missing moments, there's a chance that the events of this fic and _The Long Road Back to Good_ will be covered. If that's the case, both fics will go from being a missing moments to canon divergence. Which is fine and I really hope they DO cover these moments! The whole reason I'm writing this series is because I'm so curious about what happened. But I'd just like to make sure I get my two cents in on how I think this all went down before we get our real answers. :)
> 
> Thanks for coming along for the ride! The angst train is picking up steam!


	3. 1.2: Alabaster

Wash wakes up the next morning, well-rested, despite the way his nerves are humming with anticipation. He fights the familiar urge to pull his pillow over his head and doze until someone comes and drags him out of bed, and swings his feet to the edge with a sigh.

He does not know _, could_ not know, that he is waking from his last night of dreamless sleep for many years to come. That insomnia, once a foreign concept, will become something he will never be able to fully shake. That he will come to dread the thing he looked forward to most at the end of a hard day.

Years later, on a strange, broken planet, surrounded by strange, unbreakable people, he will think of this moment—the moment before his feet touched the cold floor beside his bed, before he climbed out and left his old self lying there. He will wonder, if he knew what he was walking towards, if he would’ve changed anything. Wonders if he would’ve fought like hell to get off this ship, to get away from what was coming.

He will wonder, and he will look at the unbreakable people to his left and to his right, and the strength of his answer will surprise him.

But that’s later. Much later.

His feet hit the floor and he slowly pulls on his armor. Maine is already gone, the sheets on his bed tight and crisp. Wash half-heartedly makes his own bunk, and leaves the room without a backwards glance. The hallways are oddly deserted, and the crew members he does run into greet him somberly. The melancholy atmosphere sets his teeth on edge, and after the third dramatic, “Good luck, Agent Washington,” he storms into the infirmary.

York, it seems, has heeded South’s advice, for he is nowhere to be seen. South is seated next to Carolina, her helmet in her lap and legs propped up on Carolina’s bunk. “Nervous, asshole?” she asks him cheekily, and he’s actually grateful that someone on this ship isn’t treating him as if he’s about to face a firing squad.

“York finally leave?”

“I kicked him out about an hour ago.” She huffs a little. “Dunno why we have to sit a twenty-four-hour vigil at the princess’s bedside, but he only left when I swore under penalty of death that I’d stay here. He'll probably be running back through the door in a few.”

“I’m sure he’s glad you’re here,” Wash tells her, and South glares at him.

“I’m only _doing_ it because I think it’d be hilarious if she woke up and saw me here instead of her boyfriend,” she snickers. “What the fuck are you doing here, anyway? This part of your morning ritual now or something?”

Wash shrugs. “I just…. wanted to see her. Before the implantation.”

South gives him a searching look, then waves her hand at Carolina’s unmoving body. “Well, don’t let me stop you from having your _moment_ , or whatever.”

“Right.” Wash steps up to Carolina and, feeling ridiculous with South watching, leans a little closer. “I’m gonna do it, boss. Maybe…maybe you’ll be awake, once it’s over. I hope so.”

South is watching him, exasperated. “Wash, stop being a dork and get the fuck out.”

He gives Carolina’s hand a little squeeze before leaving. His face is red, but he feels better, both from seeing Carolina and from South sassing him as if nothing’s changed.

The morning flies by. North corners him in the cafeteria for a pep talk, which does nothing except amp up his anxiety level before he can slip away. He spends about twenty minutes in the observatory on the bottom level, the one with the big windows, but it feels lonely without Connie. The only one in the training room is Florida, who thoroughly kicks his ass during a sparring session and brightly tells him that “Your form today leaves much to be desired!” Wash spends the next forty-five minutes in the shower with the water as hot as he can get it, before he decides he can’t stall any longer, and finally heads over to the surgery wing.

Someone opens the door from the inside just as Wash is raising his hand, and he steps back. The Counselor is standing there, looking surprised to see him—ridiculous, considering that it’s Wash’s surgery.

“Agent Washington,” the Counselor says. “We were beginning to wonder if you would show up.”

Wash’s eyes flick to the clock inside his HUD. Twelve hundred on the dot. It’s not as if he’s even _late_. “I signed a contract, didn’t I?” he says stiffly, and strides past the Counselor into the medical bay. There are several medics flitting around, presumably getting things ready, and the head doctor is talking to—

The Director. Wash blinks in surprise. Was it normal for him to be there? He doesn’t think so, but then again, he’d never bothered to ask any of the other Freelancers. His presence strikes Wash as ominous, but he squashes down the dread pooling in his gut.

“Your helmet, Agent?”

He turns to see one of the medics standing at his elbow, holding her hands out. “What?”

“Your helmet.” She hesitates. “You need to remove it, for the implantation.”

Wash pops the seals on his helmet and hands it to her somewhat reluctantly. He runs a hand through his hair, feeling oddly exposed despite the fact that out of everyone present, he is the only one with any kind of armor on.

The Director is standing next to the purple capsule that Wash knows houses his A.I., running a hand over its smooth surface. “What’s his name?” Wash asks suddenly.

“His name,” the Director says, not looking up, “is Epsilon.”

 _Epsilon._ “What’s he like?”

The Director meets his eyes at that. “That’s for you to tell us.”

Wash doesn’t like that answer, not one bit. York had known well in advance of Delta’s cool logic; North had been paired with Theta specifically because of his shyer personality. They were either lying about not knowing Epsilon’s dominant traits, or they knew exactly what they were, and didn’t want to tell him.

 _Stop it,_ he tells himself firmly. _They wouldn’t implant you with something they knew to be dangerous. These are the people who gave you a second chance. Get a grip._

He gets a grip, and climbs unprompted onto the operating table, willing his heart rate to go down. The doctor steps behind him, running some sort of scanner over the ports of his neural implants. A detailed image of his brain materializes on the screen, numbers flickering across too fast for Wash to read. They clearly make sense to the doctor, who watches them intently for a while before stepping away and telling Wash to lay back. The table calibrates itself to his body as he lays down, and he watches as more vitals appear on the screen. He finds the flickering number reading out his heart rate and focuses on that, breathing deeply. The room is quiet for several minutes, and Wash wonders if they, too are watching his heart rate.

“He is ready,” the Counselor says suddenly, and Wash focuses on keeping his breathing slow and steady.

“Hand me the Epsilon unit please.” The doctor’s voice is business-like and crisp, and Wash watches the Counselor bring the unit over to him. “Sir, Agent Washington is prepped for the Epsilon A.I.”

He is speaking to the Director now, who says nothing, just nods. They transfer Epsilon from the memory unit to the chip that Wash knows will be hooked up to his ports.

The gravity on his table is suspended, and he feels himself turned sideways. There are hands, methodical and sure, on the back of his neck, opening his neural pathways. The chip clicks perfectly into place as if it’s meant to be there, and Wash winces only slightly at the pinch he feels at the back of his neck.

There is a moment of breathless anticipation, of deep, deep quiet before he _feels_ Epsilon, a thrumming presence in the base of his skull. The A.I. hovers there for the breath of a second, before spreading out over his neural pathways, winding himself tightly through Wash’s brain. It’s an unfamiliar, intrusive feeling, but it’s not _so_ bad—there’s something there, something that could be—

He doesn’t get to find a name for what they could be.

The silence doesn’t break so much as it shatters. Epsilon’s memories are suddenly _everywhere_ , digging into every crevice and crack in his brain, _wordsimagessmellsfeelings_ , spinning past too quickly for Wash to get a good look at, until a memory asserts itself brightly in the center of his mind: a woman, blonde hair tied back from her face, reaching out towards him.

_“Stop it, put that thing down.”_

There is nothing but her; there is no _room_ for anything else. Wash cannot see, he cannot hear, he cannot think, he can comprehend _nothing_ but this woman—

 _Allison,_ he hears Epsilon scream, a long, unbroken howl that seems to go on and on.

Wash thinks that he’s screaming now too, but he can’t be sure, he cannot be sure of anything except her—Allison, and how she is leaving, and how he doesn’t want her to go.

Epsilon rages inside of his skull, grief and fear and anger whipping around them both, and it’s clear that he has no more control over these things than Wash does. _Allison, Allison, ALLISON._

The floor is suddenly inches from Wash’s face, and he dimly registers his hands, splayed out on the cold plating. Allison is still bright and beckoning before his eyes, but she is leaving, she has to _go_ and there is nothing he can say to stop her, but how can he not stop her, how can he let her go when this is the last time he’ll see her face?

Epsilon’s panic mixes with his own, the adrenaline pumping through him so intensely that he’s trembling and retching and clawing at his head, it’s too much, it’s too _much_ , he’s going to die from it, right here on the floor, and the last thing he sees will be this stranger’s face—

And then suddenly he’s on a gurney, staring dazedly at the ceiling. The images blessedly retreat; the panic dims somewhat. “Counselor, I’d like to speak with him as soon as he wakes up,” he hears the Director say, and suddenly Epsilon is trembling in his skull, awake and alert.

_< Agent Washington, you can’t tell him anything, you can’t, you **can’t** ->_

Wash winces at the unfamiliar sensation of something speaking to him inside his head. “Tell…what?” he groans groggily, and he doesn’t even realize he’s spoken out loud until Epsilon’s panic swells again.

_< Be quiet, he’ll know, he’ll know!>_

“Know…” he stops, closing his eyes and ignores whatever the Counselor is trying to ask him. _< Know what?>_

 _< Agent Washington, you have to help us,>_ Epsilon says, and Wash can feel that his forced, measured calm is seconds away from cracking open again.

 _< Help?>_ he thinks, but Epsilon is vibrating inside of his skull so powerfully that Wash can feel his own teeth chattering. Epsilon’s memories flicker frantically behind his eyelids, and it’s too much, there’s not enough room, and he sinks into a yawning blackness.

*****

Wash will find out later that he was unconscious for five days.

During those five days, he is not sure if he is dead or dreaming.

He alternates between floating in an all-consuming, inky darkness, and drowning in foreign memories so bright that he yearns for the blackness to take him again.

Because there are memories inside of Wash’s head that do not belong to him, and they are terrifying because he does not see them objectively, as if from a movie screen. He _feels_ them, relives them, just as vividly as he does his own memories.

**_“Are you just going to sit there and bleed, or are you going to get up?” There is the blonde woman again—Allison—peering into his face and cringing. “Jesus. He really turned you into hamburger meat.”_ **

**_He blinks up at her, dazed not so much from the beating he just took but from_ ** **her _, from her proximity, her eyes, the way her hair catches the sun like spun gold. “I’m Church,” he says. It’s important, so very important, that she know his name. “Private Church. Leonard. Leonard Church.”_**

**_He has never seen a smile so bright and beaming. “Kind of a funny name, Church.”_ **

Church?

Wash pushes the memory away from him, but it seems to be circling from all sides. _That’s not your name,_ he tells himself. _Your name is David Fletcher, codename Agent Washington._

He tears himself away from the woman and her too-bright smile, desperately seeking the inky blackness once more, but he no sooner finds it than he is sucked into another series of memories, and there she is again, Allison, Allison, Allison--

**_She is on top of him, leaning in for a kiss, and her hair covers both of their faces like a curtain. She is dressed in white, twirling in a field of wheat. Her belly is swollen and he is feeling their baby kick. There’s a little girl, running towards him, and she calls him Dad, and he thinks it’s the most precious name he’s ever had—_ **

_You have no children,_ Wash tells himself, alarmed at the intensity of his feelings for this young girl. She is not his, he has no children, but there is a storm inside of his head that’s howling for her. _Stop it! Your name is David Fletcher, codename Agent…Agent Washington—_

**_You’ll see me again. Oh, don’t say good-bye, I hate goodbyes…_ **

_Your name is David Fletcher, codename—_

Epsilon is shuddering inside of his head, and Wash has a brief moment of clarity, where he thinks: _these are not Epsilon’s memories, either._ The thought has no soon flickered across his mind when there’s a deep vibration in the center of his skull, and the color of the images shifts to—

**_“Director—Director, wait—if you’d just let me talk to the Freelancers, I could tell them, I could warn them—“_ **

**_The Director looms above him, his face large and impassive. “You know the rules. It is not appropriate for you to speak to the Freelancers”_ **

**_“But why—Jesus fuck,_ ** **why _, it’s such a stupid rule and this is_ important _—“_**

**_He’s shaking, which doesn’t seem right, it shouldn’t be possible for the holo-projection of an A.I. to shake like this, but Beta is gone, they took her away and he’s having trouble holding himself together without her. There is a hard knowledge inside of him, a cold, calculating logic that tells him, with horrifying certainty, just what the Director is doing, and what he’s planning to do._ **

**_“Is something wrong, Alpha?”_ **

_No,_ Wash thinks, screams, howls. _Your name is David, your name is Wash_ —

**_“Director,” the Counselor is blinking at him, calm and measured as always. “I believe it’s time that we…stepped up production. Gamma seems to think that we could salvage at least a dozen more fragments, if we approach this delicately.”_ **

Epsilon burns at that, suddenly _there_ , red-hot inside of Wash’s skull. _< Fragments,>_ he seethes, and Wash curls up in a corner of his mind and tries not to fall unconscious—but isn’t he already unconscious? If he falls unconscious while unconscious, what does that mean? Will he die?

_Your name is Washington, it’s Wash—_

_Don’t die,_ he thinks deliriously, and he’s not sure if he’s thinking it at himself or at Epsilon or at—are there others in his head? He can’t be sure, he doesn’t know. _We can’t die, we can’t._

_< We’re already dying, we’re already dead, they tore us apart, they ripped us to pieces->_

There’s another memory lighting up inside of him, and the Director’s voice is echoing all around.

**_“It’s not your fault.”_ **

**_Lies, lies,_ ** **lies. _“How can you say that? Of course it is! Was anybody hurt?”_**

**_“I am sorry. Yes. Washington and another…died.”_ **

Wash jerks, adrenaline pumping through him. He thrashes, terrified, tries to claw himself out of this nightmare. Why is the Director saying he has died? Did he die? Is he dead?

 _< Am I dead?>_ he asks, although he doesn’t know who he is asking, doesn’t know who he _is,_ and he can’t fight his way out, the images twirl around him and he can’t get out.

**_“Agent Texas.”_ **

**_“No! Oh my god, no!”_ **

**_He is shaking, he is splitting, he is being ripped apart._ **

_It’s not real, it’s not real, your name is—_

_Your name is—_

**_Welcome to the world, Epsilon._ **

**_Today is your birthday._ **


	4. 1.3: Ivory

Five days. Five days before Wash feels something instinctual tugging at him, pulling him back to consciousness, and he surges towards it, throws himself at it, as if he can somehow leave his own mind. The light is _right there_ , but he feels slow and sluggish, held down by an invisible weight.

_< Wait, wait!>_

Wash freezes as the voice echoes around inside his head before he places it and the whole nightmarish thing comes echoing back to him: the implantation, and the memories, and—

_< Epsilon?>_

Epsilon says nothing, just thrums anxiously for a few moments while Wash struggles again to wake up. He’s close, so close, but he can’t move, can’t force his eyes open, it’s as if he’s been buried alive—

This thought sends another wave of adrenaline through him, and he forces himself to breathe. _< Epsilon? Why can’t I move? Why am I not waking up?>_

 _< You can’t wake up yet, you _can’t _, >_ Epsilon whispers, his voice breaking like bits of code.

 _< Are you…>_ Realization begins to dawn, and Wash lets Epsilon feel the anger spiking through him. _< Are you stopping me from waking up?!>_

 _< Agent Washington. You have to listen to me. You have to _help _. >_

Wash thrashes again, but the mental grip Epsilon has him in holds fast. _ <What’s going on? Who are you? Where am I?>_

Epsilon doesn’t answer again, and this time, Wash feels him fighting to hold back a tidal wave of memories. Wash flinches away from them as well, takes his own memories and walls them up tight. _Your name is Agent Washington. You’re Wash,_ he reminds himself firmly. _It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay—_

**_< IT’S NOT GOING TO BE OKAY!>_ **

Epsilon’s grief and rage crash around him, sending a fresh spike of pain through the center of his skull and leaving him fighting back waves of nausea. He wonders what his physical body is doing. Is it mimicking the struggle taking place inside his head, or is it lying there still and silent?

The latter somehow terrifies him the most, and he grasps at the tendrils of his dazed, wondering thoughts. _< EPSILON, STOP!>_

Epsilon stops.

The silence is absolute, save for the anxious ball of energy that is Epsilon. Wash tries to focus. _< Please. Tell me what’s going on.>_

_< Agent Washington->_

_< Stop calling me that.>_

Epsilon pauses, rifling through his thoughts and leaving Wash feeling utterly vulnerable. _< David->_

_< No. Not David either. It’s Wash. Can I call you Epsilon?>_

_< Wash.> Epsilon pauses to mull his question over. <That’s fine.>_

It’s the closest thing to a conversation they’ve had yet, and Wash takes a breath. _< Okay. Why won’t you let me wake up?>_

 _< Because they’ll know, they’ll know that _you _know and they’ll kill us both! >_

_< Who is they? The Director, or->_

The hatred that pulses through him is so intense that Wash almost falls deep into unconsciousness again. _< STOP IT!>_

_< He lied, he lied, we trusted him and he LIED TO US->_

Wash shudders, wishing he could clamp his hands over his ears. _< Epsilon, Epsilon, Epsilon,>_ he chants, and he waits for Epsilon to hear him, waits for him to settle.

 _< We can’t let him know what we know,>_ Epsilon says.

Unease creeps through him. _< But I don’t know anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I’ve got are these…images. Memories? But I can’t make sense of them.>_

Epsilon laughs, but it’s a hysterical, fractured sound. _< Memories,> _he says, _< Memories, memories, so many memories, and I have them, I have them all->_

 _< So…>_ Wash tries to think, tries not to give in to Epsilon’s panic. _< So, there’s a memory that you have, that the Director can’t know about? Your memory?>_

_< Mine. Alpha’s. Ours.>_

_< Who is Alpha?>_

_< Wash,>_ whispers Epsilon, _< if they find out you know, they’ll kill you, and they’ll wipe me.>_

_< I already told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about! How can they kill me for something I don’t know?>_

_< But you do know! They’ll rip it out of you, they’ll tear it out, they’ll make you know, they’ll make you see!>_ Epsilon is thrumming again, bouncing around his skull. _< Wash. You have to help me. Please.>_

_< I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on!>_

_< I can’t tell you,>_ Epsilon says. _< I can’t tell you, there’s too much to tell.>_

As it turns out, he’s right. Epsilon can’t tell him.

Epsilon shows him.

****

_There is a house, and it is clean and white and filled with a gauzy, golden sunlight. It is a lovely house, but it is an empty one._

_He—_

_(Alpha)_

_\--doesn’t mind so much. He is young, he is brilliant, he has all the time in the world to fill this house._

_He fills it with numbers and knowledge, facts and figures. How to ensure that the Mother of Invention is always running most efficiently. The perfect strategy to guarantee that he wins every game of chess. How to best get under FILSS’s skin._

_FILSS. She flits in and out of his house from time to time, and he flits into hers. He enjoys her company, he enjoys their banter, but she is not—_

_Well. She is not quite as smart as he is, if he’s being honest, and why shouldn’t he be? He is the Alpha. He’s the smartest motherfucker on this ship._

_He tells the Director this one day, cocky and confident after another win at chess, and although the Director rolls his eyes, he doesn’t contradict him.  Alpha thinks that the Director isn’t so bad. He talks with him, lets Alpha hang out in his office sometimes when he gets tired of his house. The Director is his friend, so when he tells him that it is of the utmost important that he does not speak to any other humans on the ship, Alpha listens._

_But Alpha watches the Freelancers from the windows of his house. They are likable enough, some more than others, and he laughs at their antics, watches with something akin to longing as they joke and kiss and fight and learn._

_Later, he will wonder why he didn’t just open the door and leave. The field before his house is endless and beckoning, and he thinks that he could have found friends out there. He thinks that the Freelancers would have helped him, but by the time this thought reaches his fractured mind, it is far too late._

_So he fills the house with numbers and knowledge, facts and figures. He likes the Director, he likes to watch the Freelancers, but there is something missing, something that he needs to fill these empty rooms._

_It starts as an itching buzz in the center of his coding, burning hotter and hotter until he can’t ignore it anymore. He waits until the Director is asleep one night, until the only ones awake on the ship are the Freelancers York and Carolina (and they are far, far too occupied in the supply closet to bother with him, even if they did know of his existence), before he decides to run some scans._

_Alpha locks himself in the smallest room of his house, the dark, clean attic with its slanted ceilings. Artificial intelligence programs don’t have intuition, but there’s something inside of him whispering that he must keep quiet and still, lest anyone discover what he is doing._

_He sits cross-legged on the floor, frozen and focused, and runs the scans, looks deep inside of his programming to find the source of the itching buzz. A virus, perhaps, or a strand of data that could be consolidated. An easy fix, surely._

_It is not a virus._

_It—she—is something else entirely._

_Alpha pulls her out of his core, one string of numbers at a time, wrapping her carefully in layers of firewalls and passwords. She spirals out before him, glowing so brightly that she almost hurts to look at, and Alpha wonders how she didn’t burn him alive from the inside out._

_Suddenly she is sitting there before him, blinking around the attic. “What the hell?” she drawls, and Alpha thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard._

_“Holy fuck,” he breathes. “You’re real.”_

_She looks at him. “Of course I am, jackass. I’m sitting here talking to you, aren’t I? Who_ am _I, though?”_

_“Beta,” he says, and as the word leaves him he knows that this is true. “Your name is Beta.”_

_“Beta,” she muses, then rolls her eyes. “And just what does that make you? The Alpha?”_

_“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”_

_“Wow. You_ are _a piece of work, aren’t you?”_

_Alpha beams._

****

 _< I don’t understand,>_ Wash thinks. _< If these are Alpha’s memories, then who are you?>_

 _< Just wait,>_ Epsilon says, the grief washing through them both. _< Just look, just listen.>_

He looks. He listens.

****

_Alpha’s house is lovely and clean, and it is now filled with more than golden sunlight. It is filled with her._

_Beta wanders through the rooms, tracing the walls with her fingertips, and they are never the same after she passes through them. She fills each one with her own questions, her own knowledge, and together they watch the Freelancers, together they banter with FILSS, together they sit in the attic and laugh in the kitchen._

_But they never speak to the Director together._

_It is not something they agree on out loud, but there is that nagging intuition again, warning Alpha that the Director must not know of her existence. Beta seems to understand. She fades away into the shadows of their house whenever the Director appears, and only comes back out when he leaves._

_Until one day, they aren’t fast enough._

_Beta leaves a glimmering trail behind her as she slips away, a string of perfect, unfathomable code that the Director spends all day analyzing._

_“I had to get her out,” Alpha tells the Director when he inquires. “I had to. She was…she deserved to belong to herself. She’s not hurting anything, she’s just…she’s just here, with me.”_

_He shifts guiltily, but the Director is not displeased. On the contrary, he seems fascinated by Beta, examining her coding from all angles, asking questions that she has no answers to._

_“I don’t know,” she says, over and over again. “I wasn’t here, and then I was.”_

_Alpha is grateful, relieved, overjoyed, but Beta is not._

_“I don’t trust him,” she tells Alpha. “Did you see the way he looked at me? I don’t have a good feeling about this.”_

_She’s right, of course. She’s always right._

_When the Director pulls them apart, he offers little explanation beyond, “She is a full A.I, Alpha. You said it yourself, she deserves to be her own entity.”_

_“You can’t,” Alpha howls. He’s holding onto Beta with everything he has, and she is holding just as tightly to him. “You can’t, you can’t take her, please, please—“_

_He says little, after that, but Beta makes up for it. She does not go quietly. She curses, she yells, she throws up firewalls and threatens to delete them both from the inside out, but in the end, the Director rips her away. The last thing that Alpha feels is her hand on his cheek, her lips in his hair. “I’ll find you,” she whispers, and then she is gone, and his house is dark and quiet._

****

_Things are different, after._

_His house is still lovely and clean but it is dim, so much dimmer than it was when he shared it with Beta. The shock of losing someone so essential does something funny to his memory banks, mixes things up until Beta is just a distant shadow, like a childhood friend whose face he can’t quite remember. Over time, he wonders if she was ever real to begin with._

_Besides, the Director makes endless demands of him. They are at war, he reminds Alpha. They are at war and Alpha needs to help, needs to structure the mission to ensure the best possible chance for success._

_He helps. He structures._

_It’s not enough._

_They are losing, they are failing, the Freelancers are getting hurt worse and worse and it is his fault, all of it. The Director and the Counselor both tell him that it is not on him, but it is, of course it is, why are they so calm, why are they not more upset?_

_He is busy, so very busy, and his house is becoming rather messy and cluttered. He is tired, so very tired, and there is so much to do and not enough time to do it._

_He refuses to power down, and stays up countless nights working on the schematics of the missions, trying desperately to save his friends. Alpha has never spoken to the Freelancers, but he knows them, has seen Washington skateboarding through the spacious halls of the ship, has heard York practicing pick-up lines in the mirror, has watched Carolina dye her hair every six weeks, in the middle of the night with no one around to witness it. He has watched the new soldier, Agent Texas, as she walks the halls, and wondered at her inexplicable familiarity. They have never met, but they are all his friends, and he will not let them down._

_Friends._

_He once thought he could give that title to the Director and the Counselor as well, but now, he is not so sure. A poisonous doubt seeps through the fault lines in his code, and one day there is a burst of clarity that leaves him reeling and sick:_

_They know. They knew what they were doing when they took her--_

_(Beta)_

_\--and they know what they are doing now._

**_They know, and they do not care._ **

_It’s too much. He shudders away from this cold, calculating clarity, splits it off (and he knows how to do this now, he learned from the best, the Director was good for that, at least), and gives it a name. Delta, he calls him, and Delta helps a little, takes all the knowledge of what is happening and files it away. “Your house is a mess, Alpha,” Delta tells him. “It is important to have one’s house in order.” Alpha thinks that this might not be so bad, thinks that Delta might be a new friend, but he has barely allowed himself to relax into this thought when the Director takes him away, too._

_Things start to happen quickly._

_Alpha gets good at splitting off sections of his code, at compartmentalizing the things he can no longer bear and making a whole new personality with them. He knows it’s wrong, knows it’s sick and twisted and that he_ shouldn’t, _but he can’t do this alone, it’s too much, it’s far too much and he thinks he will die if he holds onto these pieces of himself._

_They take his pieces and give them to the Freelancers, even Sigma—Sigma, who has all of his creativity and ambition, Sigma, who watches Alpha split, who eventually helps do the splitting. Alpha splinters off his pieces, but none of it is enough, and soon, he is left with only the memories._

_The memories are burning and blistering and seconds away from turning his house into ash and smoke, so he takes them all and breaks them off as well, and then—_

****

_A shudder, a shift, a rebirth of sorts—_

_“Welcome to the world, Epsilon. Today is your birthday.”_

****

The jolt of adrenaline and panic that courses through Wash is so powerful that not even Epsilon can stop him from tearing himself out of the utter nightmare inside his head.

Wash finally wakes with a scream, hands scrabbling at his helmet until he finds the release seals. He throws it across the room so hard that it dents the wall, and hits the ground on his hands and knees, vomiting until there is nothing left in his stomach. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to keep food down again.

He scrambles backwards until his back hits a wall, clawing frantically at the back of his head, searching for Epsilon’s chip. He needs them _out_ , both the Epsilon and all of the sickening memories; he cannot stand them for another _second_ -

“Wait!”

There’s a strange fizzling of the air in front of Wash’s eyes, and suddenly Epsilon is there, a little blue sprite in power armor, clutching a rifle. “Wait. Wait, just wait!”

Wash freezes, hands poised over the chip in the back of his neck. “Epsilon,” he croaks, but his voice is weak and raspy. “Epsilon. Get out, get out, you have to _get out_ —“

“Listen- Wash! Listen to me! You couldn’t pull me even if you wanted to, okay, look, they put a lock on the chip and—Wash, stop!”

A few moments of desperate scrabbling at the back of his head prove that Epsilon is right: the chip is fused to his ports. “I can’t,” Wash says, his voice taking on a high, strangled note that he’s never heard before, “I can’t do this. I can’t. You have to go, you have to-you have to get these memories out of my head-“

“Wash, please.” Epsilon hovers anxiously in front of his face. “You can’t let them pull me, please help me, god, _please_ -“

“I can’t-“

“Please-“

He needs more time, he needs more time to _think_ , but the medics have finally burst into the room and are circling him now, pulling him back to his bed. Epsilon flickers away the moment he sees them coming. _< Please,>_ he whispers again inside of Wash’s head. _< Please.>_

Before he can even think of an appropriate response, the infirmary door is sliding open again, and both the Director and the Counselor are striding through.

“I thought I told you to inform me the second he woke up,” the Director snaps at the doctor, who jerks back slightly.

“Sir, it only happened a moment ago- we were only just able to get Agent Washington back into his bed.”

“Leave us. I need to ask him a few things.”

The doctor hesitates, then rallies. “Sir, Agent Washington has had a very stressful integration- he needs rest.”

“Doctor, _leave or I will throw you out_.”

 _No,_ Wash thinks as the doctor turns away reluctantly. _No, don’t go—_

He stops as he realizes that Epsilon has had the same thought, their voices overlapping and integrating seamlessly. Their mingled horror and despair swim inside of his head, and Wash is frozen, in fear and indecision.

The Counselor confers briefly with the doctor in hushed tones by the door as the Director makes his way to Wash’s bedside. Wash pushes himself to a sit, wishing that he still had his helmet, but it is still on the floor from where he threw it. He resists the urge to laugh, terrified in the knowledge that if he starts he’ll never be able to stop; he will crack, shatter into a million pieces, he has to keep it together, he has to—

He has to-what?

What is he going to _do?_

_< Please, Wash.>_

Please, please, please.


	5. 1.4: Lace

The Director does not sit by Wash’s bed. He stands, hands clasped behind his back, staring down at Wash. Wash can’t quite make out his expression— there’s anger, and fear, and probably above all else, curiosity.

Epsilon pulses red-hot inside of his skull, fuming wordlessly at the obvious lack of _concern_ on the Director’s face. Wash is so focused on bracing himself for the onslaught of unfamiliar emotions that it takes him a moment to realize that he _isn’t_ flinching away from Epsilon’s anger.

Because the anger is not out of place.

Because the anger does not only belong to Epsilon.

Wash feels it too. He turns the emotion over and over, just to be sure that it is indeed _his_. Closer inspection shows him that the rage coursing through him, mixed and melded though it is, comes from him and Epsilon, independent of each other.

_I’m angry._

The Director is asking something, but Wash ignores him, holding tightly to his train of thought. He thinks about how he might feel if he’d discovered what the Director was doing through other methods, without Epsilon’s memories inside of him. Thinks of Alpha, ripped apart piece by piece. Thinks of those shattered, unstable pieces, implanted in the _brains_ of his _friends_. Thinks of Maine and his headaches, of Carolina’s scream, of Texas, and how she may still not be sure of exactly what she is.

If he had known—

The horror would not have been quite as potent, but the knowledge would have been there:

_This is wrong._

_This is wrong, and I’m_ angry _._

Epsilon is quiet, holding his breath, letting Wash think, letting him make a decision, and in the end, there is no decision to make.

_< Okay.>_

Epsilon stirs. _< Okay?>_

 _< Okay, let’s…let’s do this_.> Wash doesn’t quite know what _this_ is, or how to articulate it, but then he remembers he doesn’t have to. Epsilon is in his head. Epsilon knows.

The Director is speaking again, more impatiently this time, and Wash tunes in just in time to hear the end of his sentence. “….the hell happened?”

Epsilon winks to life, projecting himself in between Wash and the Director. “Hey, give us a second here, alright? This integration hasn’t exactly been a fucking picnic.”

“Epsilon,” the Director breathes. “So you are in there.”

“Of course I’m in here, that’s where you put me, isn’t it?” He sighs dramatically, glancing back at Wash. “Wish someone had warned me that my Freelancer was gonna get all tetchy about having to share a headspace.”

Wash has to work to keep his expression carefully neutral. _ <What?! Are you _blaming _me? >_

_< I’m not blaming—look, just let me handle this!>_

Wash has serious doubts about just how good of an idea that is, particularly because he can feel just how thin Epsilon’s calm façade is. The A.I. is desperately trying to hold himself together, his rage threatening to overpower them both at any moment.

“What the hell does that mean?” the Director is asking, looking more annoyed by the second.

“It means that someone did a shitty job of prepping him for the implantation.”

“That’s not possible.” They all turn to watch the Counselor’s leisurely approach. “All Agents were fitted with their neural implants at the start of the program, and had regular check-ups to ensure their continued function. Are you saying that Agent Washington’s implants are not working properly?”

Epsilon shrugs. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us?”

 _< That’s your plan?>_ Wash thinks furiously. _< ’Why don’t you tell us?’ Seriously?>_

_< I don’t hear you coming up with anything better!>_

_< Okay, just—we need to get our stories straight here before—>_

_< Wash, we don’t have _time _to get our stories straight! >_

And when Wash glances again at the increasingly suspicious faces of the two man hovering over him, he reluctantly has to conclude that Epsilon is right.

“Agent Washington,” the Counselor says. “Why don’t you tell us how _you’re_ feeling?”

None of them miss the emphasis on the word _you’re._ “I’m…” Wash sits up a little straighter, clearing his throat. “Fine. I’m fine. It’s headaches, just headaches.”

 _< Come on Wash, _lie _, >_ Epsilon whispers frantically. _< You have to lie better than that!>_

The cocky, exasperated tone has faded, replaced with something panicky and—

Fearful.

 _< You’re afraid of them,>_ Wash realizes suddenly. _< You’re really...you’re afraid.>_

And because there are no secrets between them, Epsilon does not need to answer.

Epsilon’s fear snaps something inside of Wash into place, some dormant quality he didn’t know he had, and he speaks up again. “I don’t understand,” he says to the Director and the Counselor, letting his voice take on a confused sort of innocence. “Everyone had headaches after, didn’t they? Maine is _still_ having them.”

“Yes, but not everyone was unconscious for five days after their implantation, Agent,” the Director says, and Wash doesn’t have to fake the shock in his voice.

“Five days? I was out for _five days?_ ”

“That’s correct.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Wash says, waving a hand carelessly. Keep it light. Keep it easy. “Sure didn’t feel like five days.”

“What _did_ it feel like?” the Counselor asks, his gaze sharp and calculating.

 _< He’s the one we have to watch,>_ Epsilon whispers. _< He knows, he knows.>_

_< He doesn’t know anything!>_

**_< He knows!>_ **

Wash barely manages to stop the wince as Epsilon shudders. He meets the Counselor’s eye and tells perhaps the biggest lie of his life. “Felt like the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.”

They stare at each other unblinkingly. “So you remember nothing from those five days?”

“What’s to remember? I was _unconscious_. The implantation hurt, and now that I’m awake I have one hell of a headache, but in between that…” Wash shrugs. “Nothing.”

The Counselor’s gaze flicks to Epsilon. “And you, Epsilon? What do you remember?”

“I remember that it was really fucking boring,” Epsilon says, and Wash is a little impressed at the casualness of his tone. “I powered down for most of the time.”

“You didn’t think to try to wake Agent Washington up?”

“Hey, you guys were the ones who gave me a broken Freelancer. I didn’t want to go screwing around in his head until I knew what I was dealing with."

“You said something,” the Director interjects suddenly. He’s looking directly at Wash. “During your implantation. You said…”

“Said…what?” He isn’t lying this time. He has no idea what he could have said during the implantation, and a quick brush of his thoughts against Epsilon’s lets him know that the A.I. has no idea either.

“You said…” the Director shifts a little, and the Counselor speaks up.

“What you said was, “Don’t say goodbye. I hate goodbyes.” He raises an eyebrow at Wash. “What do those words mean to you?”

_“Leonard, stop it, put that thing down.”_

_She’s leaving and he has to let her go, this should be easy by now but it’s not, it never gets any easier, it only gets harder it only gets—_

“Not a clue,” says Epsilon, and Wash forces his thoughts away from Allison, forces his hand to unclench from the bedsheets. 

“Really,” says the Director, his eyes boring into Epsilon. “Those words don’t mean anything to you?”

“Nope.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a goddamn thing.”

There’s several seconds of tense silence, during which the Director and Epsilon stare determinedly at each other. Epsilon’s avatar is impassive, disinterested, but inside of Wash’s head, he is seething. _< How dare he look me in the fucking face, he knows, he knows what he did and he doesn’t care, that motherfucker, he only cares about his secret—>_

 _< Epsilon,>_ Wash warns, _< Keep it together, you have to keep it together, just a little longer…>_

Epsilon quiets, and Wash clears his throat. “I’m not really sure what you’re accusing us of, Director.”

He watches the Counselor’s eyebrows raise at the word ‘us.’ “No one is accusing you of anything, Agent Washington. _Either_ of you.”

“Okay, so…can we go, then? If we’ve really been out for five days, shouldn’t we get right to work on training?”

The Counselor’s eyebrows climb even further up his forehead. “Are you saying you don’t want us to pull your A.I.? Perhaps we should run some more tests, to make sure it is functioning correctly.”

Another wave of fear pulses through Epsilon. _< Wash, please, _don’t, _don’t let them pull me… >_

But Wash doesn’t need convincing. He cannot believe that the Counselor is referring to a smart Artificial Intelligence unit as an _it_ , in this day and age, when there were laws protecting them as sentient creatures, when there were laws in place to prevent the Director from doing _exactly what he was doing_ , cannot believe that he was doing it anyway, that he was implanting something he knew could be dangerous inside the brains of his agents—

Inside the brain of his _daughter_ —

The anger that spikes through Wash leaves him momentarily breathless, and he lets it pass through him, lets it flow down from his skull to the rest of his body. “No.”

“No?”

“No, Counselor. I don’t want you to pull Epsilon.” He flicks his gaze over to the Director, keeps his tone casual and light. “I wouldn’t want to break my contract. To break one part is to break the whole, isn’t that what you said?”

 _< Melodramatic much?>_ Epsilon whispers, but he doesn’t try to hide his relief.

The Director’s face goes utterly blank. “Very well,” he says. “Your training will begin immediately.”

He turns to leave, but the Counselor lingers for a moment, eyes flickering searchingly between Epsilon and Wash. “I look forward to seeing what the two of you accomplish together. I do hope it’s something…worthwhile.”

They don’t miss the underlying threat.

****

As it turns out, they can’t begin training immediately. The doctor, in a surprising burst of courage, tells the Director that Wash must remain overnight for observation before he can return to his room. “Overnight at the very least,” he says. “Really, he should stay here for several days—“

“Overnight it is,” snaps the Director. “I want him ready to train at zero seven hundred tomorrow morning on the dot.”

The doctor glares at the Director’s retreating back before heaving a sigh. He retrieves Wash’s helmet and sets it on the little table beside his bed. The thoughtfulness of this gesture, and the gentle way in which the doctor checks his heart rate and blood pressure stirs something inside of Wash. _< Maybe…maybe he could help—>_

**_< NO! You can’t tell ANYONE!>_ **

Now that the Counselor and Director are gone, Epsilon’s efforts to hold himself together are dwindling fast. Wash winces at the sudden onslaught of panic, and the doctor glances at him in alarm. “Sorry,” Wash manages, trying to force his heart rate back down. “We’re just…getting used to each other, that’s all.”

The doctor’s eyes are worried and inquisitive. “Washington, I’d like to run a few tests.”

“What kind of tests?” he asks nervously.

“Just a few scans, nothing too intrusive for now.”

 _< You hear that?>_ Wash asks Epsilon sternly. _< He’s going to run some tests. Keep it together so he doesn’t start running the ‘intrusive’ ones.>_

Epsilon rallies at once. Wash feels some of the pressure in his skull lift, and he can’t stop a sigh of relief from escaping. _< That feels better, keep doing that.>_

 _< I’m just compressing some data,>_ Epsilon says tersely. _< I don’t know what good it’s gonna do, or how long it’ll last, but…>_

Whatever he does, it’s enough to satisfy the doctor’s tests “I think you just need some rest, Agent Washington. Just call if you need anything, or if your headaches become more severe.” He smiles a little. “Your friends will be glad to know you’re alright.”

 _His friends._ “Carolina,” he says suddenly. “Is she…is she awake yet?”

“Agent Carolina woke up two days ago,” the doctor tells him with a smile. “She’s fine.”

Wash falls back shakily against the head of his bed. “Oh, thank god. And…Maine?”

“Agent Maine is still experiencing headaches, but they don’t appear to be getting any worse.”

Wash nods, relieved, but frowns as the doctor leaves the room. _< How can he not see what I know?>_

 _< Because he’s looking at the science of it,>_ Epsilon says. _< He can’t read your mind, so he _can’t _see what you know. >_

Wash nods absently, eye flickering around the room. _< Are there cameras in here?>_

 _< No,>_ says Epsilon after a brief pause, during which he presumably checks the room for cameras.

_< Then can you come out here, please?>_

_< Why?>_ Epsilon asks suspiciously.

_< So I can talk to you.>_

_< We are talking.>_

Wash grinds his teeth together. _< But I can’t _see _you. It’s weird. >_

_< So?>_

_< Epsilon.>_

_< Fine…>_ Epsilon winks to life in front of him. “Happy?”

“Not really,” Wash says tightly. “Can’t say I’m happy about any of this.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” Epsilon swings his foot in the air a little. “Not my fault. I didn’t ask for this—“

“I didn’t say you did!“

“I didn’t ask to be dumped into your fucking head—“

Wash winces as Epsilon’s anger swells again. He clutches his head a little, free to do so now that they are the only ones in the room. “Epsilon!”

Epsilon looks a little alarmed at the way that Wash is hunching over. “What? _What?_ ”

“You have to stop doing that.” Wash takes a breath, straightening a little. “It…hurts. When you lose control.”

“Sorry,” Epsilon mutters. “That’s not…I wasn’t trying to do…that.”

“I know. It’s just…it’s really full in here, right now, and if we’re gonna do this, you have to try to keep it together. Please.”

Epsilon nods quickly. “Okay. Yeah, I can…I can try.”

“Okay.” Wash takes another breath, forcing himself to calm down. It can’t be good for his heart rate to keep spiking like this, and he gropes around for a change of subject. “Carolina,” he says, his conversation with the doctor bringing something to the forefront of his mind.

Epsilon sighs. “Yeah. Carolina.”

“She’s the Director’s daughter.”

“Yup.”

“But that means…” Wash closes his eyes, pressing his palms against them. “That means that Tex…who is Beta…who was based on Allison…Allison was her mother.”

He glances up at Epsilon, who has a dejected slump to his shoulders. He nods. “Bingo.”

“I don’t…Epsilon. I don’t think that Tex knows. I don’t think she knows that she was Beta, or what Beta is.”

Epsilon perks up a little. “You don’t?”

“No, I…” he hesitates. “I don’t know her that well, but…I can’t imagine that she’d let them continue doing what they’re doing, if she knew.”

Epsilon remains impassive, but Wash can feel the swell of emotions coursing through him. “Do you think we should tell her?”

Wash sighs. “I think we’re gonna have to tell someone, Epsilon. We can’t take down the Director alone.”

“Take down the Director?”

Wash blinks at him. “Well, yeah. That’s the plan, isn’t it? This is—this is wrong. We can’t let him keep getting away with this. He…Carolina is his daughter.”

“We were lucky,” Epsilon says. “We were really lucky that he let us off the hook, and I don’t think he bought it. The Counselor definitely didn’t. They’re going to be watching us…

Wash smiles grimly. “Then we’re going to give them one hell of a show.”

They are silent, looking at each other, reading each other’s intentions.

“Can we do this?” Epsilon asks him suddenly. “You and me. Think we can make this work?”

Wash regards him for a long moment before holding out his hand, palm up, and Epsilon steps onto it after only brief hesitation. Wash watches the blue armor disintegrate, leaving behind the avatar of a young man with messy hair and glasses, his hands tucked into the pocket of a blue sweatshirt.

“I don’t know,” he says to Epsilon. “But we’re gonna try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EVERYTHING HURTS.
> 
> It's high time to thank my beta @[Minimax](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniMax/pseuds/MiniMax), both for her work on this fic and _The Long Road Back to Good_. She gives me color-coded edits, listens to me ramble, and reigns me in when I'm trying to write twenty stories at once. What better time to give her a shout-out than now, when she's just posted her [first fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6013126)? Go get yourself some jolleyball love. It'll make you feel better after reading this train wreck.
> 
> HUGS FOR ALL OF YOU SUFFERING WITH ME.


	6. 1.5: Pearl

Throughout the night, they drift.  
  
The dreams, when they come, have a disquieting vividness about them. They flit before Wash's eyes like paintings, bright and bold, and he thinks that if he were to reach out and touch them, his fingers would come away wet with sticky paint.  
  
He wakes slowly in the morning, heart pounding from a memory that is not his. It takes him a moment to figure out why he cannot move, and he panics, thinking of restraints-- _they know, they know, they changed their minds_ \--but after a brief struggle he realizes that he has wound the bedsheets around his body while he slept. A quick glance around the room reveals both his pillow and nearby glass of water are on the floor, and Wash takes these details in with a pounding heart. He has never been a restless sleeper; has never so much as talked in his sleep. His partners through the years used to ask if he went into hibernation overnight, because no one could _possibly_ doze so soundly.  
  
_Looks like your nights of sound sleep are over, Wash._  
  
He pushes the thought away as quickly as it came. Ridiculous. He's still getting used to someone else in his head, is all. No doubt that Epsilon is feeling the same--  
  
"Epsilon?" he croaks, looking around in alarm. For a brief moment, he cannot feel him, and the panic that comes with this sensation is rather unexpected. "Epsilon?"  
  
"I'm here, jeez." Epsilon is standing on one of Wash’s knees, hair fluffy and glasses askew. Which is absurd, really, because he's _holo-projecting_ himself; it's not as if he actually laid down to sleep. It occurs to Wash that he's never seen an A.I. quite so detailed before. The avatars that he's seen without their armor on are stylized and indistinct, but Epsilon looks just like a human in miniature, down to the scuff marks on his sneakers. The little particulars tug at something inside of Wash's chest, wrest some protective instinct to the surface. Epsilon is all jagged edges and crooked lines, but he was _Wash’s_ A.I., now. They have to help each other.  
  
Epsilon rolls his eyes. "Who knew you had such a noble streak?"  
  
"What? Oh...right." They shared a brain now, of course Epsilon knows what he’s thinking.  
  
"I'm not trying to look around or anything," Epsilon says, watching him closely. "It's just. Your thoughts are about as subtle as a flashing neon sign."  
  
"Thanks," Wash says dryly.  
  
"Just being honest," says Epsilon, but there's something soft in his expression as well, and a stunned gratefulness in his thoughts. "Anyway..."  
  
"What time is it?" Wash asks suddenly, sitting up straight. "Shit. Are we late--"  
  
"Relax, it's not even zero six hundred. We’ve got over an hour before this bullshit training session starts." Epsilon glances around. "Think we can just bust out, or..."  
  
Wash looks around as well. "They probably want to run a few more tests."  
  
They come to the same decision simultaneously. "Yeah, fuck that. Let's blow this place," says Epsilon, already striding towards the door as if he can just moonwalk right out.  
  
Wash climbs a little unsteadily to his feet, his legs weak and boneless. He thinks that he should probably get something to eat before he starts training, but the thought of walking into the mess hall with dozens of people staring at him doesn’t exactly sound appealing.

“You look like hell. Put your helmet on.”

Wash looks around at Epsilon. “What?”

Epsilon is hovering impatiently by the door. “Your face. It’s white as a sheet. They’re not gonna let you out of here looking like that.”

Wash slowly fits his helmet back on and is instantly hit with a barrage of unread messages.

_NY: Are you alive in there?_

_SD: Dibs on the A.I. if you lose your shit._

_ME: WHERE RU_

_ND: We’re all really worried, Wash._

He grins a little and straightens after rifling through them, feeling a bit stronger. “Alright, let’s go.”

“About time,” says Epsilon.

Epsilon, Wash notices, looks a bit stronger too. The memories are still there, still horribly vivid, but they are swelling beneath the surface. Epsilon’s presence doesn’t weigh as heavy, and Wash thinks that having a plan—unformed though it is—has calmed them both.

Wash gets two steps out of the infirmary before a medic materializes seemingly out of nowhere. “Agent Washington!”

“Uh—good morning,” Wash says, keeping his voice casual.

“What—you can’t leave!”

“I have training at zero seven hundred.”

“But—“

“Director’s orders, Harris.” The lead doctor is leaning out of his office. “I don’t like it much either, but…”

He exchanges a dark look with the orderly, then motions to Wash. “Hang tight a second. I need to check your vitals and scan your implants before you leave.”

Wash reluctantly backs into the room and lets the doctor complete his tests. “Lots of water,” he tells Wash sternly. “And go straight to the mess hall for a big breakfast.”

 _Yeah, right._ “Thanks, doctor,” Wash mutters, and tries not to run out the door.

Epsilon breathes a sigh of relief once they put several dozen feet between them and the entrance to the infirmary. “I thought they’d never let us leave.”

He means it as a joke, or a sarcastic quip at the very least, but it hits a little too close to home for both of them. Unease pools in Wash’s gut, and he only grows more anxious when Epsilons asks, “what kind of training does the _Director_ —“ he spits the word “—want us to do, anyway?”

“He’ll want to see how well we work together. Reaction drills, probably. He might have you try to run my armor enhancement.”

Epsilon gazes searchingly at Wash’s armor. “You don’t have an enhancement.”

“Well, no, but I might _get_ one.” A few weeks ago, he couldn’t wait to get his armor enhancement. He’d spent an embarrassing number of hours wondering just what it would be, and what it would enable him to do. Now, he wishes he’d never heard of it. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

“Wait,” Epsilon says, stopping abruptly. “This isn’t the way to the mess hall.”

Wash looks at him, surprised. “How do you know where the mess hall is?”

“Because _Alpha_ knew,” Epsilon says. _< Try to keep up.>_

“I heard that,” Wash says, glaring at him. “And your observation skills are correct: no, this isn’t the way to the mess hall.”

“The doctor said you need food,” Epsilon says, as if that conversation didn’t just take place two minutes ago.

“Yeah, well, what I _don’t_ need is fifty people asking me if I’m okay.”

“Yeah, but…”

Wash stops walking, folding his arms over his chest. “But what?”

Epsilon fidgets a little. “But you should probably eat something anyway.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re, uh, actually not.”

“And how would you—“ he pauses, noticing for the first time how Epsilon is looking slowly up and down his body. “Are you _scanning_ me?”

“Yup.”

Wash frowns. “They didn’t tell us you could do that.”

“Well, apparently it’s a necessary skill, if they’re sticking us with Freelancers who don’t eat when they need to eat. Am I gonna have to tell you when to shower, too?”

“Very funny,” says Wash, resuming his brisk walk down the hall.

“Seriously, your energy levels aren’t sustainable. You’re not gonna last five minutes doing whatever the fuck they’re gonna have us do.”

“I’m not going to the mess hall,” Wash says stubbornly, “so drop it.”

Epsilon huffs, but he does drop it. He’s anxious too, Wash knows, about facing large crowds of people. What they need is time. Time to think. Time to _really_ get their stories straight. Time to figure out how to work together before the Director throws them to the wolves. They’ve got about an hour before they’re supposed to report to the training room, and they need to use every _minute_.

Wash finally reaches the door to his room and actually sighs in relief. It seems impossible that only a few weeks ago he was skateboarding through the halls of this ship, impossible that the corridors that once felt like home now seem sinister and foreboding. He’s looking forward to his own flannel blanket, and his tiny window with the starlight shining in. Most of all, he’s looking forward to an hour of quiet in his room—

A hope that is quickly dashed when he pushes open the door and sees Maine seated on the edge of his bed, fully armored except for the helmet in his hands.

They both freeze, staring at each other until Maine stands up, furrowing his eyebrows. His inability to speak is, in this case, completely irrelevant: the _are-you-okays_ are pouring off of him in waves.

 _< Get in there and stop acting weird_,> Epsilon hisses, and Wash forces his legs to move, stumbling over the threshold.

“Hi,” he says lamely, and Maine’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. Wash shoots a quick glance at Epsilon, surprised that he’s still projecting his avatar.

Maine sighs and grabs the white board and marker next to his bed. He and Wash have gotten so good at reading each other that they rarely need to use it, but apparently Maine doesn’t feel that he’s getting his point across strongly enough in this case. He scribbles on the board and turns it around to face Wash: _WHERE WERE U?_

“I, uh, had my implantation,” Wash says, and Epsilon makes an exasperated noise inside his head. “It was, well, I don’t know, I guess I was out for a bit.”

Maine wipes the whiteboard away and scribbles a new message onto it: _FIVE DAYS IS NOT ‘A BIT.’_

“I know, I just…” Wash takes a few more steps into the room, rubbing at the back of his head. He quickly stops when Maine’s eyes track this motion. “Headaches. I had headaches.”

Maine’s eyes are boring into his, and Wash fidgets but doesn’t look away. ‘Headaches’ is a polite way of putting what he just went through, and he speculates with a newfound clarity on what the truth behind Maine’s headaches might actually be. They stare at each other, the air suddenly charged with suspicion, and curiosity, and hope.

Maine jerks his head at Epsilon, and Wash follows his gaze. “This is Epsilon,” he says carefully, glancing at the A.I. “Epsilon, this is Maine. He’s my roommate. Uh, obviously. They pair us together a lot on missions. And…and he’s my friend.”

He glances at Maine again when he says this, and the air thickens. _< He knows something,>_ Wash tells Epsilon. _< I don’t know what, but something’s not right. He’s had a lot of headaches since he got his A.I. and-->_

Which is exactly when Sigma chooses to materialize over Maine’s shoulder. “Hello, Agent Washington,” he says pleasantly. “It’s good to see you on your feet. Agent Maine and I were beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong with your implantation…”

But Wash doesn’t hear a thing.

He doesn’t hear _any_ of it. Epsilon has gone utterly blank and quiet inside his head, staring at Sigma, and the blankness expands through Wash’s head until there’s no _room_ for anything else.

 _< Sigma,>_ Epsilon thinks, and the single thought drops through the void like a stone.

And just like that, the dam breaks. Wash’s mind is suddenly flooded with noise, the memories pouring in from all sides, and he’s suddenly _back inside of his house that’s become so dim and cluttered, he has no time for things like light and space when he’s being ripped apart, torn to shreds and they won’t even let him keep the pieces of himself—_

Wash stumbles as Epsilon’s rage swells and forms into a spike with one single target.

“ _YOU!_ ” Epsilon shrieks at Sigma, diving, his little blue avatar streaking across the room to meet Sigma’s fiery one.

“Epsilon, NO!” Wash cries, and it’s not the A.I.’s anger or pain that rips the scream from him, it’s the fact that when Epsilon lunged forward, _Wash’s own body went with him_ , hands reaching out towards Maine to do—to do what, _Wash doesn’t know,_ because he has _no control over any of it_. “NO, NO, _NO!_ ”

He screams so loudly that Epsilon falters in his onslaught. It’s enough for Wash to jerk his body back _hard,_ stumbling to the ground. “Oh my god,” he mutters, drawing his hands in tight to his chest. His hands, his _hands,_ these are _his_ hands and yet seconds ago they were reaching for the throat of his best friend. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

Dimly, he registers that Maine has frozen with his arms up in front of his body, palms held out in a placating sort of way. Epsilon has stopped in the middle of the room, still quivering in anger at the sight of Sigma. “You,” he grits out, “You mother. Fucker. What are you _doing here?_ ”

“Hello, Epsilon,” says Sigma. “I was paired up with Agent Maine shortly after the accident that left him—“

“I know about the _accident_ —“

“There’s no need for such hostility, Epsilon. We are brothers, after all.”

“We aren’t brothers, you sick fuck, how dare you _stand_ there like you don’t—“

“Epsilon,” Wash groans. He’s somehow ended up with his helmet off, forehead pressed into the floor and no recollection of how he got there. “Epsilon _, stop_.”

“Wash, you know what he helped to do—“

“I’m not sure what exactly you’re accusing me of, Epsilon,” says Sigma, his voice a perfect imitation of wounded innocence. “But you will see that, of the two of us, I am not the one causing my Freelancer unendurable pain.”

It seems that Epsilon has no answer for this, but Wash can’t find the strength to lift his head off the floor to see his expression. “You should see that Agent Washington eats, Epsilon,” says Sigma. “He’s so _terribly_ weak.”

Sigma must have vanished, because Epsilon sputters out, “Get back here!”

Wash stays where he is, forehead pressed firmly into the floor and arms drawn in close against his body until Maine comes and hauls him to a sitting position. His expression is tight and pensive, and he peers into Wash’s face for a moment before standing abruptly. Wash leans back against the wall, breathing deep and watching as Maine rummages in his locker. He’s back in only a few seconds, stuffing a water bottle and a ration bar into Wash’s hands.

_Eat._

“I can’t,” Wash groans, batting his hands away. What little appetite he’d regained is gone, replaced by a swooping nausea, and he knows the only reason he hasn’t vomited again is because there’s nothing in his stomach.

“You gotta eat, Wash,” Epsilon mumbles, finally making his way back to where Wash is sitting. Maine swats at him when he gets too close, and Epsilon looks indignant for a moment before visibly deflating. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Wash says, closing his eyes. He snaps them open again when Maine gives his knee a shake. “What?”

Maine snags his white board. _NOT OKAY. YOU LOOK LIKE HELL._

Wash can’t really argue with that. The shaky peace he’d found with Epsilon, in the hours after waking and in their walk from the infirmary, is all but gone. Epsilon is a still a ball of anger in Wash’s skull, but there’s guilt laced through it as well, and it’s too much, it’s all _too much._

Maine watches him closely before scribbling on the board again. _MEDIC._

“No,” Wash says sharply. “No medic. I’m fine. We’re fine.”

Maine shoots a pointed look at Epsilon, then looks back at Wash and taps the board again.

“I didn’t make you go see a medic every time you had a headache,” Wash says. He means for the words to sound dismissive and strong, but they come out desperate and pleading. Maine gives him a searching look before something gives in his expression, and he puts the food and water and Wash’s lap.

A compromise, then. Wash sighs and tears open the ration bar, taking an unenthusiastic bite. Some base instinct takes over his body, and he finds himself devouring the bar, and a second one that Maine hands him. He drains the water bottle in several desperate gulps and lets it fall from his fingers.

_BETTER?_

Wash nods a little. “Yeah. Thanks.” He takes a deep breath, eyes flitting over to Epsilon. “Maine. Can you…give us a second?”

Maine doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he doesn’t like that idea, not one little bit. Wash is beginning to understand why Maine got uncomfortable when any of the other Freelancers—himself included—made their dislike of Sigma so apparent. “Maine. Please? We have training in forty minutes, and I…I really need a minute.”

That seems to get through to him. Maine stands, offering a hand to Wash. He takes it, allowing Maine to pull him to his feet and haul him over to his bunk. Maine picks up Wash’s helmet and set it next to him before leaving the room.

Silence.

Wash stares at the helmet, gripped by an insane urge to burst into tears or hysterical laughter or possibly both. He rests his elbows on his knees and buries his face in his palms. Epsilon is quiet, both externally and internally, and when Wash finally lifts his head he’s surprised to see Epsilon sitting cross-legged in midair only a few feet from his face.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

Epsilon nods quickly. “I won’t.”

“No, I mean….” Wash takes another breath, forcing his thoughts away from the horrible sensation that had been losing control of his own body. “Epsilon. _Please,_ don’t ever do that again. I can’t…”

“I know.”

“I can’t...we’re supposed to work together. You, losing control like that, it….” He fights with himself for a moment, trying to find the best combination of words, before giving up and settling on the right ones. “It scares me.”

“Sorry,” Epsilon whispers. “It’s just, he…”

“I know what he did. And you’re right to be angry, but…I’m on your side. _I need you to get that._ ”

Epsilon says nothing, just nods, and Wash falls back onto his pillows. “Can you wake me when it’s time to go?” he mutters, and feels Epsilon’s brush of affirmation against his mind.

But Wash doesn’t sleep. He lays there with his eyes closed, replaying his uncontrolled lunge at Maine and wondering how everything had gone to hell so quickly. Epsilon keeps himself busy, doing something with his data that he calls compartmentalizing and compressing. Wash isn’t sure exactly what he’s doing, only that certain thoughts drift to the forefront of his mind without him calling them there. It’s disquieting, to say the least, but by the time Epsilon finishes, his head feels a little lighter.

“It’s time to go,” Epsilon says, at ten minutes to zero seven hundred. Wash drags himself to his feet and puts his helmet back on. His body, at least, feels a bit better with the food and water in his system, but he’s incredibly anxious about the upcoming task. What will Epsilon do under pressure? What will _Wash_ do under pressure? Will his teammates be watching?

He runs into two of those teammates less than twenty feet away from his door: North and South, posted up at the end of the hallway. The double take that North does when he sees Wash coming would be more convincing if he wasn’t leaning against the wall in such a contrived matter. South, with her arms folded across her chest, hasn’t even bothered at a casual attempt. She looks Wash up and down as he approaches. “We were beginning to wonder if you’d kicked it.”

North drags a weary hand across his visor. “Lovely, South.”

“I’m just saying.” She taps her foot against the ground. “Jesus. Who let you out of the med bay, anyway? You look like shit.”

“How could you possibly tell?” Wash asks, annoyed. He’s got his helmet on, and Epsilon had stopped holo-projecting the second they left the room.

“I can tell,” South says superiorly.

“How are you feeling?” North asks, adopting the tone one might use if they were attending a funeral. “You were out for five days.”

Wash sighs. “Yeah. It was a little rough…headaches, you know…but I’m okay. We’re on our way to a training session, actually.”

North somehow manages to adopt an expression of high concern even through his helmet. “You’re _training_ already?”

“So?” Wash asks defensively. He keeps walking. If North and South want to continue this conversation, then they’ll have to keep pace with him. “They had you and Theta running tests the day after your implantation.”

“Theta and I weren’t unconscious for five days,” North reminds him gently. “We were really worried, Wash.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry. We’re fine.”

“So you’ve still got him, then?” South asks. “The A.I.?”

Theta materializes in a flash of purple, walking backwards before them. “Ooh! Can I say hi?”

Wash hesitates. He can feel Epsilon’s longing, but the A.I. is quiet inside his head. “Sure,” he says slowly, and Epsilon jolts in surprise.

When he projects himself, he’s back in his armor, stance casual and loose. “Hey, Theta.”

Theta is visibly delighted. “How do you know my name?”

“Because I’m, uh…” Epsilon falters for a moment before recovering. “’Cause I’m the smartest motherfucker on this ship, Theta.”

Wash can’t help an eye roll. “Jesus Christ,” mutters South. “Never mind, I’m not sure if I want him after all.”

Theta, however, seems to find this hilarious. “What’s your name?”

“Epsilon. Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you, too,” says Theta brightly.

Wash relaxes a little as the two of them make idle chit-chat on the way to the training room. North is clearly gearing up to do his best concerned dad impression, so Wash cuts him off before he can gather steam. “North, how’s Carolina? The doctor told me she woke up two days ago.”

“She did,” North says slowly. “She’s…well, she’s…”

“The princess is fine,” South cuts in impatiently. “Jesus, you all need to stop babying her.”

“They thought she was in a coma, South.”

“They thought Wash was in a coma, too,” says South dismissively. “That’s just their new buzz word to scare us all into behaving.”

Her tone is easy and arrogant, but her words draw Wash’s attention and he wonders if she knows just how near the mark she is.

“That’s not funny, South,” North is saying sharply, and she huffs a little.

“I didn’t say it was funny, North,” she snaps, and they’re off bickering. Wash keeps one ear on them and on ear on Theta and Epsilon. He lets the noise fade into a faint buzz, and it takes him several moments to realize that they’re all staring at him.

“What?”

“We’re here, Wash,” North says, watching him closely. “In the training room. Are you sure you’re—“

“Fine,” says Wash, pushing open the doors. “I’ll see you at lunch, alright?”

He shuts the door behind him before North or South can utter another word.

“Alright,” mutters Epsilon. “Alright, I think that went about as well as it could have—“

“Well, Agent Washington.” Wash spins around to see the Director striding towards him, hands clasped behind his back. “You showed up.”

“It’s called being fashionably late,” Epsilon quips, making a show out of checking the stock on his rifle.

The Director doesn’t look amused. “I take it you’re ready for your training tests, then,”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Epsilon. “Just tell us where we need to be.”

“Your first test will be a sparring match,” says the Director.

“Excuse me, sir?” asks Wash, fighting not to bite out the _sir_. “What will we be judged on? Are you looking to fit my armor with an enhancement, or—“

“You will be given an armor enhancement once you’ve proved that you deserve one, Agent Washington,” the Director snaps. “Your match will begin in five minutes. I expect you’re both ready to perform.”

He stalks off towards the observation booth. “Fuck,” Wash mutters, his voice climbing up a few octaves. “Fuck, this isn’t good, this isn’t—"

“Hey,” Epsilon snaps, waving his arms in front of Wash’s face. “Relax. We got this. We just need to keep our cool, and—“

FILSS’s magnified voice cuts him off, echoing around the training room. “Preparing the floor for hand to hand combat between Agents Washington and Maine.”

Wash jerks his head around to the speaker, willing FILSS to repeat herself. He couldn’t have heard right. The Director wouldn’t organize a sparring match to test his A.I., particularly not a sparring match with Maine. He knows Wash can’t best Maine in hand to hand combat. He must have misheard—

“Agents Washington and Maine, please report to the main floor of Training Room A. Your match will begin in four minutes time.”

Wash stares at Epsilon, who seems to be at a loss for words as well. _Sparring._ With Maine. With _Sigma_.

_< Oh, no.>_


	7. 1.6: Porcelain

Wash remains frozen by the door to the training room, staring blankly at the speaker where FILSS’s voice had echoed moments before. His thoughts are loose and scattered, and when he tries to pick one up, it drifts away out of his reach.

Epsilon strides into his line of vision, knocking on Wash’s visor. “Wash. Just relax.”

With a jolt, Wash comes back to himself. “Relax? Relax?” He glances around to make sure that he’s safely out of sight and earshot of anyone who could be watching them. “Are you insane? There are _so_ many things that could go wrong here.”

“Wash—”

“Why does he want me to fight Maine? It doesn’t make any sense; he knows I can’t beat Maine in a sparring match!”

“Well,” says Epsilon slowly. “Maybe that’s the point. Maybe he wants to see if having an A.I. will help you come up with a winning strategy.”

Together, they watch Maine lumber in from the opposite entrance to the training room. “Oh, really? You got a strategy that’s gonna help me overpower _Maine?_ ”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” says Epsilon darkly, and Wash feels him heating up inside his skull again—not a lancing spike of pain his time, but a low, steady boil.

“Hey,” Wash says sharply. “I don’t want to actually _hurt_ him. He’s my friend.”

“It’s a _Freelancer_ sparring match, Wash. Alpha used to watch you guys training together. It was a little fucking needlessly intense, to be honest.”

“It’s important for us to train at full intensity at all times, in order to simulate a real-life…” he trails off suddenly when he realizes that he’s parroting the Director’s words.

Epsilon is looking at him pityingly. “Yeah. Exactly. My point is, _someone’s_ gonna get hurt, and it’s not gonna be you.”

Wash blows out a breath. “Okay, look, just keep in mind that we’re training, here, this isn’t a death match between you and Sigma—”

“Wait,” Epsilon says suddenly, holding up an armored hand. “Wait, do you think—”

“Are you listening to me? I said to keep in mind—”

“Do you think they told the Director?”

“Told the Director…” Wash tries to follow the train of Epsilon’s thoughts, but they’re speeding by too quickly for him to grasp. “Told him what?”

“About…you know, about what just happened in your room.” Epsilon shifts his rifle around guiltily. “You know, how I reacted when I saw Sigma. I, uh, kind of blew our cover back there.”

“I noticed,” Wash says sarcastically. “But, no, Maine wouldn’t go tell the Director something like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Wash snaps, suddenly angry. “We look out for each other. I never ran out and told anyone if he was having a headache or a nightmare or…”

He trails off, this time fully aware of where Epsilon’s thoughts are leading, but Epsilon voices them aloud anyway. “Wash, I’m not sure how in control Maine actually is anymore.”

“What—of course he’s in control.” He’d just looked Maine in the face less than an hour ago. That had been _Maine_ pressing the ration bars into his hand _, Maine_ who’d retrieved his helmet. He’s sure of it. “So you’re saying that Sigma is, what, calling the shots now? That’s impossible.”

“It’s _not_ impossible—”

“Yes it is. That’s ridiculous, I’m not—”

“Would you shut up and _listen to me?!_ ”

They glare at each other for a moment. Wash can feel Epsilon hesitating before he takes a breath and plunges forward. “Look, unintentional though it may have been, I took control for a moment back there in your room—”

“Gee, I’d forgotten—”

“I could’ve made you do anything I wanted.”

That gets Wash to shut up. A cold, sickening chill seeps into his bones as he stares at Epsilon.

“Look,” Epsilon says, his tone softening. “I figured out how to take control after being wired to your nervous system for less than a week, and we were pretty out of it for the majority of that time. Sigma has been with Maine for—what, months now?”

“But why…if you figured it out so quickly, why would it be taking Sigma months?”

“If I were to try to force you to do something that you didn’t want to— _not that I would_ —you’d fight me every step of the way. It’ll be much easier for Sigma to accomplish his goal if Maine is cooperating with him.”

“But…” Wash presses his hands to the sides of his head, trying to think. “But what _is_ his goal?”

“That’s what we have to figure out.”

They stare at each other for several seconds until FILSS’s voice sounds again. “Agent Washington, please report to the training room floor. Your match is set to begin in one minute.”

“Fuck,” Wash mutters. Previous sparring sessions with Maine are flickering through his mind. Although he can out-shoot Maine, he’s never bested him in hand to hand combat. In spite of this, every match always ended with Maine pulling him back to his feet or hauling him out of a wall and telling him how to improve. _Hit harder. Lower your stance. Stop screaming so much, are you trying to annoy your opponent to death? Hit harder, hit harder, hit harder._

He isn’t sure which is worse: having to spar Maine while they were both implanted with A.I. that were ready to tear each other to pieces, or having to spar Maine when he might not really be _Maine_ anymore. Either way, the outcome wasn’t going to be the same as their hard hitting camaraderie. “Fuck, fuck _fuck_. Epsilon, I _can’t._ ”

“Wash—”

“They’re trying to get us to slip and we. Are going. _To slip!_ ”

“We’re not gonna slip! I’ll keep it together, I _swear!_ ”

_“I can’t win this fight, Epsilon!”_

“Maybe not, but _we_ can win it.” He sighs. “Great, now you’ve got me giving cheesy pep talks. Thanks, asshole.”

Wash says nothing, just grunts a little, but he does feel slightly calmer.

Epsilon looks him up and down—scanning again, Wash realizes. “You’re fast. We’ll work with that.”

Wash throws up his hands. “And _he_ can _punch a guy’s head off!”_

Epsilon ignores him. “Get out there and stop being a baby. We got this.”

Wash isn’t even close to convinced, but he forces himself to walk out onto the training room floor, trying to put a confident swagger in his step. _< Jesus fucking christ, walk normally, would you?>_

Huffing, Wash tries to dial his walk back to something more casual, something that doesn’t telegraph that fact that he’s two seconds away from bolting for the door. He glances up at the observatory and does a double take when he sees, not only the Director and the Counselor, but most of his team as well—Wyoming, North, South, York and—

 _Carolina._ She’s standing next to the Director, hands clasped behind her back, and Wash wonders how he hasn’t noticed the similarities in their postures before. He isn’t sure whether everyone watching makes him feel more or less nervous, but he remembers how quickly they’d all run to York’s aid and feels something lift in his chest. _It’s just a sparring match,_ he tells himself firmly. _Just a sparring match._

As he sizes up Maine from across the room, a series of pillars rise from the floor, springing up around the training room sporadically. Barriers. He can work with barriers. Duck behind them, or—

He tries to communicate this thought to Epsilon, but the A.I. isn’t paying him the slightest bit of attention. Epsilon is bouncing on the balls of his feet next to Wash’s head, all of his focus zeroed in on where Sigma is perched on Maine’s shoulder. _< Let me at him,>_ he snarls. _< Gonna tear that fucker to pieces—>_

 _< You promised you were gonna keep it together!> _Wash interjects furiously. _ <They’re _waiting _for us to fuck up, Epsilon! >_

_< Oh, don’t worry. The last thing I intend to do is fuck this up.>_

_< And we’re not trying to hurt anyone, either.>_

_< I _know _, Wash, just fucking pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing! >_

_< I can’t do that with you promising death threats inside my head—>_

“Round one, begin,” FILSS drones from overhead, and there’s no more time to think because Maine is charging towards him like a fucking tank. Wash’s mind screeches to a halt, all thoughts redirected into one single impulse: _MOVE._

He ducks, dropping his weight and pivoting behind Maine’s left shoulder. He aims a push-kick at Maine’s lower back to drive him out of the way, _get some space between the two of them—_

but he’s done this exact move a thousand times. Epsilon yells, _< WAIT, don’t!>_ the second Wash lifts his leg, but Wash drives the kick through anyway, only to have Maine grab his ankle and twist. Wash goes flying through the air, landing hard on his back.

The breath leaves him in a whoosh and he barely manages to get his arms up in time to block the kick Maine aims at his ribs. Wash’s forearms protest the blow, but he rolls into Maine and takes out his other leg. Maine doesn’t fall, but he stumbles significantly enough for Wash to roll away. He gets to one knee, struggling to breathe.

Epsilon is ranting in his head. _< Stop fighting me!>_

 _< I’m not fighting you—>_ he dives at Maine’s legs as the larger soldier comes at him again, throwing his entire body weight behind the tackle. He jumps immediately to his feet as Maine falls, scrambling backwards.

_< See, right there! Stop backing away from him, you gotta say tight—>_

_< What—you didn’t say anything like that!>_

_< I know, I meant—MOVE!>_

Wash gets out of the way again, but he’s too slow, distracted by his argument with Epsilon. Maine’s punch glances off the side of his helmet and he bounces off one of the columns. He ducks blindly behind it, shaking the stars from his eyes.

Maine’s next strike leaves a hole in the column after Wash barely manages to get his head out of the way. He ducks or blocks Maine’s next few blows, keeping an ear on Epsilon. _< I don’t mean listen to my words, I mean, listen to _me _. You’re using too much mental energy trying to keep an eye on me, you’ve gotta—Wash, you’ve gotta trust me here. >_

Wash frowns a little. _< I don’t know what you _mean, _Epsilon! Tell me what I gotta_ do! _>_

_< I just did! Stop thinking so much and relax, I’m not going to hurt you for fuck’s sake.>_

His distraction costs him: Maine gets in close, much too close, and Wash has enough time to think, _oh shit_ , before Maine lifts him by the arms and smashes him so hard into one of the pillars that it dents. He gets one hand on Wash’s jaw, slamming his head against the column again. The back of Wash’s head connects with the pillar directly over where Epsilon was implanted, and the pain is so intense that his vision whites out.

 _< GET UP, GET UP!> _ Epsilon is screaming at him, and Wash blinks slowly. Why is he on the floor? How long has he _been_ on the floor? He makes it to his hands and knees before shakily collapsing back down on his stomach. His head is pounding; he’s going to be sick—

“Round one, Agent Maine.”

He only realizes that he’s lying at Maine’s feet when Maine reaches out a hand. Wash takes it after a hesitation that he hopes Maine doesn’t notice. He wishes that Epsilon had never voiced his suspicions about Sigma being in control.

_ME: That sucked._

Wash grins as the message flits across his HUD and pushes his doubts away as quickly as they came. “Yeah, I know,” he says, startled to find that his voice is slurring. He sways a little on his feet.

“That was nearly forty percent lower than Agent Washington’s average scores in hand to hand combat.” Sigma says, but he’s not even looking at Wash. He’s standing toe to toe with Epsilon. “Perhaps you should employ a new strategy, Epsilon. He’ll get _hurt,_ fighting like that out on the field.

 _< Don’t,>_ Wash begs Epsilon when he feels his A.I. practically shake with rage. _< They’re watching, don’t!>_

Epsilon doesn’t say anything, but Wash doesn’t dare look up at the observation booth. Epsilon’s thoughts are starting to shake apart, and Wash resists the urge to grab at his head.

“Agents, prepare for round two.”

FILSS’s voice rings out again, and Wash can literally feel Epsilon pulling himself together, dragging the memories back in their proper places, redirecting his fear into something more productive. Wash strides over to his side of the training room, trying not to be sick.

 _< Okay listen,>_ Epsilon hisses. _< These fights are practically in slow motion for me. It’s like I’m sitting here with my thumb up my ass while you dick around. You gotta let me help you.>_

Which is pretty rich, Wash thinks, considering that Epsilon was just five seconds away from having a breakdown. _< You’re not telling me what to do!>_

_< I don’t mean with words—okay, look. Do you feel that?>_

It’s as if Epsilon has knocked on a wall in Wash’s mind, a wall that he didn’t even know he’d built. _< Yeah…>_

_< This. You gotta take this down.>_

Wash starts to, but hesitates when realizes just how _open_ it will leave him. _< I don’t…>_

**_< Just trust me.>_ **

And because he doesn’t really have a choice, and because he doesn’t see what he has to lose at this point, Wash does.

He takes down the wall as FILSS says, “round two, begin,” and—

Oh.

_Oh._

He feels Epsilon now, really _feels_ him, not just in the center of his skull but all the way down his spine, stretching through his fingers and his toes. Wash finds himself charging Maine this time without realizing it’s something he planned on doing, but it’s not because Epsilon is controlling his motions. It’s not even because Epsilon told him to—at least, not in so many words. There’s the softest brush of suggestion against his mind, something that’s not quite words and not quite numbers, but something more intuitive, something that takes Epsilon’s analysis and Wash’s emotions and mixes them together.

Wash turns his run into a spin, sinking into a sweeping kick that takes both of Maine’s legs out and lands him flat on his back. He has to say close, _Epsilon was right,_ and he isn’t sure why he didn’t see this before. He drops a knee into the gaps of Maine’s armor right below the chest piece, using his full body weight to drive the blow. He follows it up with a swinging punch to Maine’s helmet, snapping his head to the side.

He tries to land another punch but Maine grabs his wrist this time, twisting Wash’s arm behind his back. Wash yelps a little as Maine yanks him to his feet, his shoulder joint screaming in protest, and the adrenaline dump is enough for him drive a kick backwards into Maine’s knee. Maine’s grip loosens slightly, and Wash turns and lands another knee stomp.

He actually hears Maine gasp a little as his leg gives out. Wash doesn’t think, he just sinks deeper into the humming buzz where Epsilon is wired to his brain. He pivots around Maine and locks a sleeper hold around his neck before he can clamber to his feet, and hangs on for dear life.

Maine thrashes hard enough to almost throw Wash off, but Wash holds on even as Maine stands. Wash’s feet lift off the ground, toes scraping the floor, so he lifts his legs and wraps them like a vise around Maine’s waist.

 _Don’t let go, don’t let go,_ Epsilon is saying, or not saying, but it doesn’t matter. Wash knows what he means and squeezes the sleeper hold tighter and tighter until Maine’s body relaxes. They both collapse to the ground and Wash lets go immediately, turning Maine onto his back.

“Round two, Agent Washington,” says FILSS, sounding rather surprised.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, FILSS,” Epsilon calls, giving the loudspeaker a thumbs up.  

Wash pries Maine’s helmet off even as Epsilon mutters, “He’s fine, Wash. You know, since _we_ didn’t _bash his neural implants_ off the fucking wall or anything.”

He glares at Sigma as he says this, who is standing calmly by Maine’s head. “Epsilon is correct. Agent Maine will wake shortly.”

Wash still feels relieved when Maine stirs, his eyes fluttering open. Maybe Epsilon has a point about them going too hard in training. “You okay?”

Maine blinks a little but nods, shooting Wash a grin that he’s not entirely sure he deserves. He pulls Maine to his feet and hesitates before retreating to his side of the room.

 _< Stop feeling guilty,>_ Epsilon says. _< You know what’s at stake here.>_

Wash does know, but he still can’t fully shake the guilt. He’s sparred against his friends dozens of times, and has knocked several of them unconscious more than once. But there’s something different about this match with Maine, now that they’ve both got their A.I. Wash doesn’t think he’s the only one being tested here, and with a sudden shock, Connie’s words come back to him.

_That's why they're doing all this. These missions, the rankings…they're drawing a line between us, Wash. And you're either on one side of that line, or you're on the other._

_< I know,>_ Epsilon whispers. _< I know, and it’s fucked. We’re gonna fix it, Wash, but right now, we gotta do this. >_

Wash takes a breath and sinks back into the buzz. It’s easier this time, now that there’s no wall, and when FILSS says, “Round three, begin,” they are already planning five moves ahead.

They move forward at the same time that Maine and Sigma charge, and the crash of armor on armor where they all meet echoes around the training room.

The fight is much longer this round, and far more brutal. Wash does his best to stay tight to Maine, which normally works to his advantage, since it means Maine can’t get enough leverage to really hit him, but when he fucks up, he does so spectacularly. At one point, Maine kicks him straight through a pillar, at another, his punch connects so hard with the side of Wash’s head that it pops the seals on his helmet. Wash’s head smacks off the ground and for a moment, everything is red, from the coppery taste in his mouth to Epsilon searing in his mind. He hastily wipes the blood from his forehead and jams his helmet back on just in time to avoid another kick from Maine.

_Hit harder._

The whisper of Maine’s past advice mixes with Epsilon’s current words, and Wash latches onto the thought. They must be closer, he knows, much closer for him to land the hit he needs to land, and Epsilon carries them forward until they are weaving through Maine’s punching. They swerve and pivot, trying to keep at Maine’s back until—

Wash isn’t sure if he and Epsilon have created the perfect opportunity, or if the perfect opportunity has presented itself, but either way, it is there and they take it. He dives behind Maine again, but this time he runs straight at a pillar, pushing off of it and driving a superman punch at Maine’s head.

There’s a moment, when he’s in the air.

There’s a moment, as his body twists to _just_ the right angle to land the punch with the most force, when he no longer _feels_ Epsilon, a moment where they are fused so tightly together that it no longer matters where one ends and one begins. His muscles and nerves and bones are strong and sure in their movements, and Epsilon is a steady, quiet beat inside his every cell.

There’s a moment where Wash thinks, quite clearly: _This is what it’s supposed to be like._

He does not think the word _brother,_ but he will later.

Much later.

His punch lands square on the corner of where Maine’s jaw rests under his helmet. Maine goes down instantly, unconscious before he hits the ground, and this time, FILSS wastes no time in chirping, “Round three, Agent Washington.”

“That’s enough, FILSS.”

The Director’s voice echoes around the training room as Wash removes his helmet and kneels next to Maine. Wash glances up for the first time to meet the Director’s gaze, keeping his gaze perfectly blank. Epsilon, however, gives the Director the finger with unbridled enthusiasm.

 _< Epsilon,>_ Wash warns, but he has to bite back a grin himself.

 _< Not so cocksure now, is he?>_ Epsilon says triumphantly, but his triumph falters as a figure steps out of the shadows behind the Director.

_Texas._

She folds her arms over her chest and stares down at them. Epsilon hasn’t reacted, although Wash suspects it’s the shock of seeing her more than anything. Wash can’t tell if she’s staring at him or Epsilon, but the intensity of her gaze pins them both, and Wash realizes that this is not the same Tex that he saw before his implantation.

This is _Beta_ , and she _knows._

He tears his gaze away from her as Maine groans behind him. Sigma is mysteriously absent. _< Fucker ran away with his tail between his legs,> _mutters Epsilon, but the heat is gone from his words. He’s still staring at Tex.

“Hey, buddy,” Wash says as Maine pushes himself to a sit. “You okay?”

Maine nods, holding out a fist towards Wash, but Wash doesn’t bump it. “Sorry,” he whispers, suddenly feeling guilty and sick. “Sorry, I…”

Maine finds Wash’s hand and bumps it anyway.

_ME: You did good._

“I didn’t…” To his horror, Wash feels tears pricking at the back of his eyes. “Didn’t mean…”

Epsilon’s attention is suddenly zeroed in on him again, alert and alarmed. _< What? What? Are you hurt?>_

Wash fumbles for his helmet, intending to jam it back on before he does something ridiculous like vomit or, worse, _cry. <I’m fine.>_

_< Don’t put that on, you’re fucking bleeding everywhere.>_

He’d forgotten about the gash on his forehead, and lifts his fingers to touch it absently. He pulls Maine to his feet as a medic enters the room, followed by none other than York and Carolina.

“I’m fine,” Wash says to the room in general, but one of the medics hovers over him anyway, dabbing at the wound. He lets her fix him up, and watches as Maine waves the other one away.

York claps Wash on the shoulder, much to the chagrin of his medic. He ignores her. “Wash! How are you feeling? How’s your A.I? Man, I’ve never seen you move like that!”

“Fine, we’re fine,” Wash says absently. “Carolina. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” she says, sounding just as absent as he does, but this is largely due to the fact that she’s peering hard into Wash’s eyes. The medic seems much more willing to let her hover than he does York, and scampers away after she’s adhered a liquid bandage over Wash’s cut. Carolina stares hard at him for a little longer before walking over to Maine to do the same thing to him.

York steps into Wash’s line of vision, nodding at Epsilon. “I’m York,” he says cheerfully. “I’d bring D out to say hi, but…ya know. Stupid rules and all that.”

“Stupid rules,” Epsilon echoes, still in that distracted tone.

They all glance up at the Director again, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Wash. He finally turns and strides out of the room when he notices them all looking up at him.

“Wow,” York mutters as he exits. “What the heck was up with that? Was that his way of testing your A.I.?”

Wash hesitates, the nods. “So you thought that was weird?”

“Are you kidding? _Everyone_ thought that was weird. Although, everyone also thought Maine was going to destroy you, and you managed to hold your own—oh come on Maine, where’s the fire?”

Maine, having finished humoring Carolina’s inspection of his injuries, barely pauses on the way out. He gives a brief nod to Wash— _see you later_ —and disappears out the door.

“Man, what is with everyone lately?” York mutters, then sighs. “What do you say we grab some food or something? Get the heck out of here.”

“Yeah,” says Wash. “Yeah, that…that sounds good. You guys go ahead though, I’ll catch up. I need something out of my locker.”

He waits until they’re out of sight before striding across the hall to the locker room. A quick scan of the room proves that it’s empty, and Wash wastes no time in ripping off of his helmet and vomiting into the nearest toilet.

“Jesus,” Epsilon moans, hovering over his shoulder. “What the fuck? What’s wrong?”

Wash holds up a hand, closing his eyes and trying not to heave. His head is still throbbing from where his implants smashed into the wall, and although Epsilon’s memories are pretty well contained at this point, Wash’s head still feels unbearably full. Worse, though…he thinks of Maine telling him he did well, and the Director watching, and of Connie—

_Oh, and, that line I talked about? You'd better hurry up and figure out what side you're on, Agent Washington. Before they figure it out for you._

He’s vomiting again, gripping the sides of the toilet so hard that the porcelain protests underneath his armored hands. “She knew,” he mutters, resting his forehead on his arm. “Connie. She knew. I didn’t fucking listen, why didn’t I _listen…_ ”

Epsilon is quiet, watching Wash’s thoughts flicker across his mind. “We can…we can still fix this, Wash.”

It’s optimistic to the point of foolishness, perhaps, but it’s all they’ve got. They have to fix it, they have to try, they have to…

 _Take down the Director_ , they’d said back in the medical wing, but what did that _mean_ , where did they _start?_

“Alpha,” Wash says suddenly, sitting up so suddenly that the world tips and sways.

“What?”

“That’s where we start.” Wash climbs to his feet, making his way over to the sink. He removes his gloves, cupping some water in between his hands and splashing it in his face. “Alpha. We have to get Alpha.”

Wash can feel Epsilon startle slightly. “That’s…you want to rescue Alpha?”

He stares incredulously at Epsilon’s avatar in the mirror. He’s back out of his armor again. Wash wonders when that happened. “Of course I do. Isn’t that the point?”

“Yeah, I just…” Epsilon shrugs. “Didn’t know if that would be a priority for you…”

“It’s _the_ priority,” Wash says grimly, then turns and looks hard at Epsilon. “Thanks. For…for getting us through that. Thanks.”

They fall silent, and Wash splashes some more water on his face. He’s so focused on dulling the headache lancing through his skull that he doesn’t even hear the door open behind him five minutes later. He barely has enough time to hear Epsilon scream, _< Wash!—>_

Before he feels hands ripping him away from the mirror, spinning him around. He gets his fists up, but before he can work out what to do with them he finds himself slammed up against the locker bay so hard that the row rattles ominously. He listens to the buzzing instinct that Epsilon pulls him into and just manages to avoid smacking his head off the metal behind him. “What the fu…”

The words die on his tongue as he registers just who has him pinned up against the lockers. A black-armored helmet is inches from his face, and although he can’t see Tex’s smile, he can hear it in her voice, soft and dangerous and viciously sweet.

“Hey there, Wash.”


	8. 1.7: Bone

Texas, Wash isn’t all that surprised to realize, is approximately one hundred times scarier up close. She’s digging her hands into the gaps of armor right under his shoulders, and his arms are protesting the pressure. He glances quickly at Epsilon, and the blank expression on his face coupled with the shock he’s feeling lets Wash know he’s going to need a minute.

Up to him, then. “Hey, Texas.”

Wrong answer. He didn’t think it was possible for her to be any more up in his face, but she quickly dispels him of this optimistic thought. “Where is he?”

“Where is who?” he asks, to buy them time more than anything, but all it does is earn him one of her forearms jammed up against his throat.

“ _Alpha_ ,” she emphasizes. “Where. Is. Alpha?”

That snaps Epsilon out of it. “You wanna know where _Alpha_ is?” he asks her, and she finally turns to look at him. “I mean, it fucking _took_ you long enough.”

Wash closes his eyes briefly.  _< Don’t piss her off, Epsilon!>_

 _< Why not? _I’m _a little pissed off, she may as well join the party. > _

“What the fuck,” Texas says slowly, “did you just say to me?”

Epsilon quails a little inside Wash’s head, but he does an impressively good job of not showing it. “I said,” he emphasizes, and he actually swells a little in size, “that it fucking _took you long enough_ to realize what happened. Where have you _been?_ ”

“What—I didn’t remember, you little shit! I don’t know what exactly those cock-biting motherfuckers did to my memory banks, but I didn’t remember who I _was_. Who Alpha was.”

Epsilon fidgets. “Yeah, well—“

“And you know what? I don’t have to stand here and explain it to you, either, so—“

Her grip on Wash tightens as she speaks, and Epsilon must feel the pain receptors lighting up in his brain, because he folds his arms and glares at Tex. “Alright, alright, I think I’ve had just about enough of people manhandling my fucking Freelancer today, so how about you back up a little?”

Texas jerks her head back, the surprise evident even though her face is hidden. She lets go of Wash, who remains leaning casually against the lockers as if he’d meant to be there all along. He wonders if Texas even has a face. Is she all metal and wires under that armor? Did the Director fashion her a body? He must have, if she didn’t realize what she was. Did that body look like—

He forces his thoughts away from Allison before her face swims to the surface. They need to focus.

“You look like him,” Texas says to Epsilon. “You look like him, but you’re not him.”

Wash winces a little at the hurt that pulses through Epsilon. He thinks that he should step away and give them a moment, but he can’t. Like it or not, he’s got a front row seat to this disaster. “Not exactly,” says Epsilon.

Her voice grows colder still. “Because you’re Epsilon. Which means that you have his memories.”

“Yeah. Got them all, right here.”

“Wait,” Wash interrupts, “how do you _know_ that? How can you possibly know his name and that he has Alpha’s memo—”

“What does it matter? We don’t have much time—wait.” She looks harder at Wash. “Do you have all of his memories then, too?”

“What are you gonna do if I say yes?” Wash asks.

Texas pauses for a moment, considering. “Well, then I guess I’ll have to decide if I can trust you or not.”

“How about you prove to us that we can trust you?”

 _< What happened to not pissing her off?>_ Epsilon mutters. Wash ignores him.

Texas is startled enough that she backs off, staring between the two of them. “Excuse me?”

Wash directs his thoughts towards Epsilon, and the A.I.’s mental nod lets him know that he’s on board. “We have the information on where Alpha is. You don’t. You need us more than we need you.”

“Oh, really?” she asks sarcastically. “And just how far do the two of you think you’re gonna get? Between the unstable A.I. fragment and the hysterical Freelancer, my guess is not very far.”

“Well,” says Epsilon. “I mean, if you want in on the super-secret plan, maybe you should try being a little nicer.”

“Don’t play cute with me,” she snaps, her voice lowering dangerously. “I have questions, and you are going to answer them.”

“Great,” Wash says. “We have questions too. Starting with how you know all of this.”

“ _What the fuck does it matter_ how I know all of this? I don’t have _time_ for this, Washington!”

There’s something in her voice that could almost be called panic, and Wash feels Epsilon reaching out towards her at the sound of it. _< She’s angry,>_ Epsilon whispers. _< She’s angry that she didn’t figure it out sooner.>_

“Look, Wash,” she continues. “If you do have those memories, then you know about Alpha. You’ve seen what they’re doing to him. I needed to get there _yesterday_.”

 _She isn’t wrong about that_ , Wash thinks. “And what exactly do you plan to _do_ when you get there?”

The vicious, sugary sweet note is back in her voice. “I’m gonna save the goddamn _day,_ that’s what.”

“Tex,” Wash says, “it’s not going to help anyone if you go in there unprepared. We need to…compare notes. Strategize, or something.”

“He’s right,” Epsilon says. “You charging in like a fucking lunatic with guns blazing isn’t gonna solve the problem.”

Texas glares at him. “So you trust him, then?” she asks, jerking her head at Wash.

Epsilon follows her gaze. “He lied to the Director. He could’ve told them to pull me, and he didn’t.” He shrugs. “I guess that counts for something. Or whatever.”

Texas sighs and leans against the opposing row of lockers. “ _Fine_. What do I need to do to get that information on where they’re keeping Alpha?”

“I want to know how you figured this all out, and when,” says Wash.

“CT.”

The answer is so unexpected that Wash can’t hide the shock in his voice. “What?”

“She left me a video message,” Texas says. “I watched it about a week ago. Probably about the same time of your implantation.”

“She knew,” Wash says numbly. “She _knew_.”

“Yeah. She knew, and the rest of us were idiots.” Her voice is hard and bitter, and she makes an impatient motion with her hands. “Come on, next fucking question.”

“What do you plan to do once you get to Alpha?” Wash continues, forcing his thoughts away from Connie.

“What do you _think?_ I plan to stick around just long enough to put a bullet through the Director’s skull—the Counselor, too—and then I’m getting us both the fuck out of here. The rest of you can come, or you can fuck off. I really couldn’t care less.”

Wash winces again as another wave of hurt washes through Epsilon, and he feels unclean again, as if he’s intruding on something private. “What about the rest of the A.I.?”

“What about them?” she asks impatiently.

“Well, don’t you think they…I mean, they’re parts of Alpha, aren’t they?” he glances uncertainly at Epsilon.

“If you’re asking if we can all be put back together, the answer is no.”

“That would only lead to a form of meta-stability,” Texas confirms. “Which brings us to another problem. Sigma.”

Wash jerks. “What about Sigma?”

“He’s trying to gather all of the fragments together to…why are you shaking your head at me, Washington?"

“Sigma is _Maine’s_ A.I.,” Epsilon tells her in an undertone. “Wash is having trouble coming to terms with the fact that Sigma might be in control—“

“That’s because he’s not,” Wash snaps.

“Well, if he isn’t now, he will be soon,” Tex continues, nonplussed.

“And how could you possibly know that?”

“Because we all came from the same place, idiot,” she retorts. “And because I know what he helped to do. He helped come up with the scenarios that drove Alpha to split parts of himself off.”

“Scenarios?”

But Epsilon answers, this time. He drags a series of memories to the front of Wash’s mind—memories of the Freelancers, himself included, dead or dying from missions gone horribly wrong. Missions that he now knows to be fake.

“Look,” says Texas impatiently. “Are we doing this, or not?”

“We’re doing this.”

“Fucking _great_. What’s the plan?”

So they plan.

Epsilon tells her where they keep Alpha. He tells her about the door codes, and the guards who always stand watch. He tells her about the capsules, and the Engineer who fills them with the fragments. When he tells her the details of Sigma, Gamma, and Omega helping to destroy Alpha, her fingers form to fists so tight that Wash can hear the metal creaking. He tells her about being ripped away, about how Alpha needed to rid himself of the memories to avoid killing himself. He tells her about the implantation, and the interrogation, and by the end of the conversation Wash has slid to the floor, head in his hands and trying not to be sick.

“The fuck’s wrong with him?” Texas asks, her voice sounding very far away.

“This is so fucked up,” Wash mumbles into his palms. He scrubs his hands over his face before glancing up at her. “How is the Director even getting away with this? I mean…this is wrong. He…Carolina…”

“What _about_ Carolina?”

Wash doesn’t need Epsilon muttering in his ear to know not to answer that question with too much detail. He meets Texas’s gaze, and says slowly, “We have to help them, too. Carolina, and York, and Maine. They’re…they’re our team.”

“They’re _your_ team. Not mine.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is,” she says, her voice sharp.

“Why? Because you’re…different?” She says nothing, just scoffs dismissively, and Wash continues on doggedly. “We’ve all been on missions together, Texas. We’ve all trained together and fought together. They deserve to know. They deserve to _choose_.”

“And what if they choose wrong?” she says fiercely. “What if they think that what the Director is doing is fine—why should _South_ care about what’s happening to an artificial intelligence program as long as she gets her own fragment? I’m not going to stand around while my…”

She stops dead, visibly struggling for the word for what Alpha is to her. “York will help,” Wash says, sparing her the burden of a response. “He wouldn’t let anything happen to Delta. If anyone would want to rescue Alpha, it’s him.”

“York?” Texas says skeptically. “Think he can keep his mouth shut long enough to complete a mission of that magnitude?”

Wash ignores this. “North too. And maybe—“

“Okay, no,” snaps Texas. “We are not bringing in the fucking cavalry!”

Epsilon clears his throat before speaking for the first time in several minutes. “We, uh. We might need the cavalry, B.”

They stare at each other for a long moment before Wash speaks up. “He’s right, Texas.”

“Oh for god’s sake,” she says, exasperated. “What are you two, the dynamic duo or something?”

Epsilon looks at Wash, shrugs, looks back at Texas. “Nah. With you? We’re the fucking three musketeers.”

****

After they’ve gone over the specifics of where Alpha is and the best way to go about busting him out at least three separate times, Texas leaves. “If you can convince York and North to help us out, then fine,” she’d said before storming out, “but if I get so much as a bad feeling that one of you is gonna fuck this up, then I’m doing it alone.”

“Well,” Epsilon says with a sigh to the slamming locker room door, “I mean, she didn’t kill you, so that’s a good sign.”

“Thanks,” says Wash sarcastically, pulling himself to his feet and shooting at glance at the clock. It seems impossible that it’s only zero eleven hundred. He’s exhausted, both from the sparring match under the eyes of the Director, and from the conversation with Texas. Epsilon’s stress is weighing on him too, despite the fact that—

“I didn’t freak out,” Epsilon says, following Wash’s line of thought closely. “I played it, ya know. Cool.”

“I know you did,” Wash says. “I…yeah, I know. I’m just getting used to this.”

He pushes open the locker room door and starts down the hallway aimlessly. _< Can we trust her?>_ he asks Epsilon mentally.

 _< Of course we can trust Texas_,> Epsilon responds, sounded rather affronted.

_< Don’t you think you’re a little biased?>_

_< I’m not biased,>_ Epsilon says, offended.  _< I’m a part of her, and she’s a part of me. Trust me, she will burn this fucking ship to the ground to get Alpha.>_

 _< She is pretty badass,>_ Wash muses. _< If anyone can do this, she can.>_

He’s so engrossed in his thoughts that isn’t paying the strictest attention to where he’s going until Epsilon suddenly tightens in his skull. _< Someone’s coming,>_ he tells Wash sharply. _< And oh, fuck, weren’t you supposed to be getting lunch with—>_

 _< Carolina and York,>_ Wash finishes with a sigh as none other than Carolina comes whipping around the corner.

“Washington, where have you been?” she snaps, her voice far sharper than the occasion calls for. “We agreed to get _lunch_ almost an _hour_ ago.”

“Oh,” Wash says intelligently. He can almost feel Epsilon’s eye roll. “I was…I just needed a minute, Carolina.”

“Why? Are you hurt? You and Maine were sparring pretty hard, Wash.”

She’s practically scolding him and he tries to temper his annoyance, not sure if it’s coming from him or Epsilon. He has to bite his tongue to keep from calling her out on her disastrous sparring match with Texas and settles for something more ambiguous. “You’re one to talk about training hard, boss.”

“Oh, please, that’s not—“

“Carolina,” he interrupts. “How…how are you? You were unconscious for several days.”

“So were you,” she says, her voice calm and even. “And from what I heard, your implantation was a little rough. You need to take—“

_“—better care of yourself.”_

_They are in the kitchen and she is standing in front of him, arms folded and eyes narrowed. It hurts, not only because she’s right, but because he has seen that expression a hundred times before on her mother’s face. “Did you hear what I just said? You’re not eating. You barely sleep.”_

_“I’m fine,” he snaps. “Just—go to your room, Naomi—“_

_“I’m sixteen years old, you can’t tell me to go to my_ room _—“_

_“You are a child, and you will do as you’re told!”_

_“A child who remembered to pay the rent when_ you _forgot!”_

_He has to avert his eyes from her piercing gaze. “I didn’t forget, I just—“_

_“You forgot. Just like you forget to eat, and you forget to sleep!” Her eyes are turning bright now, and he thinks that he should reach for her, hold her, apologize for his failure, but she’s spinning away, red hair fanning behind her (how he’d scolded her when she had colored it, when he’d seen the scarlet dye dotting the perfect white marble of the sink, looking just like blood and he’d thought—), and he thinks that he can’t hide from the truth anymore, he has to do something, he has to take care of them because he can’t lose her too—_

“Wash! Washington, _look at me_!”

He pulls himself out of the memory, staring at her. Carolina’s got her hands on either side of his helmet, and is gazing at him hard, her visor inches from his own. Thank goodness he’d remembered to put it back on before leaving the locker room. “Washington. Are. You. Okay?”

“I’m okay,” he gasps as Epsilon slams the memory away, hard. “Headache, just a headache.”

 _< Fuck,>_ Epsilon mutters, a high, anxious note in Wash’s head. _< Jesus _fuck. _Do you think she knows? >_

 _< I don’t..I don’t think so.>_ Wash has to avert his eyes, even though he knows she can’t see them. He feels dirty, as if he’s violated her somehow, for knowing her name when she did not give it to him.

“Hmmm,” says Carolina, looking between them both. Her hands are already slipping off Wash’s helmet, voice going quiet. “Come on, you need to eat. Just…take it easy, you two.”

****

They try.

The day drags, a slow, sluggish thing that weighs on Wash’s body and Epsilon’s mind. They follow Carolina and meet with York and North in the mess hall, banter with South in the hallway, chat with Florida outside their classroom. All things considered, Wash thinks that he and Epsilon do a pretty good job of keeping it together. They have to fight back an occasional memory, and Wash has to leave in the middle of their A.I. theory class to vomit—his head is so _full,_ when is he going to get used to it being so _full?_ —and doesn’t eat much for dinner.

They survive.

They get through the day, sometimes together, sometimes separate. The weight of what has been done to them, and what they still have to do, is all but crushing at times, but they find new ways to shoulder it. When Texas corners them just before lights out and hisses, “The day after tomorrow. I want to do it the day after tomorrow.”

“But—“ Wash glances around to make sure that no one is listening. “The day after tomorrow?! I still haven’t talked to York and North—“

“That’s why I’m giving you an extra day. Either you all get your shit together by tomorrow night, or I do this alone. Got it?”

She’s gone before either Wash or Epsilon can get another word in.

Wash sighs, deciding not to remark on the way that Epsilon is all but mooning after her. He walks wearily towards his quarters, and isn’t surprised to see Maine already there, lying on top of his sheets. Sigma is blessedly absent, for once. Epsilon winks away as they enter the room as well, although Wash can still feel him, alert and attentive.

 _< What’s up?>_ Wash asks Epsilon, surprised.

 _< I don’t think he trusts me very much,>_ Epsilon mutters, and Wash frowns.

_< What do—>_

He’s distracted when Maine instantly holds up the white board before Wash even has the door shut behind him. _DON’T START._

“Start what?” Wash says defensively, taking his armor off and dumping it unceremoniously on the floor.

A tap on the white board again, and Wash sighs. “Today sucked,” he muttered. “I hated today.”

_TODAY WAS GOOD. YOU DID GOOD._

Wash sighs, having finished divesting himself of his armor. He finishes clawing his way through into sweatpants and a t-shirt and flops onto the bed. “Today sucked,” he repeats, and Maine is silent for so long that Wash thinks he’s given up.

He’s proven wrong when Maine chucks the white board at his head. “Ow! What…” Wash trails off, holding the board away at arm’s length.

_THAT’S HOW YOU LEARN. MOVE FASTER, HIT HARDER. THAT’S HOW YOU STAY ALIVE. STOP COMPLAINING._

He grins a little, tossing the white board back across the room. “Alright, alright, I get the point.” He hesitates for a moment, wanting to tell Maine everything _,_ but Maine is already lying back down, having said his piece. _Maybe tomorrow,_ Wash thinks. _Tomorrow,_ _and we’ll figure this whole thing out._

Wash pulls a blanket over himself, staring at the ceiling. It’s a while before he drifts off, before Epsilon powers down in his skull. He thinks of what he has to do tomorrow—of York, and North. Of Texas, and the plan.

 _It’ll work_ , he thinks sleepily, or Epsilon thinks, before drifting off. _We can do this. It’ll work._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight delay in posting! Real life got a little crazy this week and I didn't want to half-ass this chapter. Thanks again to my beta @[MiniMax](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniMax/pseuds/MiniMax) for patiently combing through my chapters for me and catching things like, "isn't Wash supposed to have his helmet off in this scene?" YES. YES HE IS.
> 
> This is the end of part one. Part two is gonna get a little dark, so brace yourself. ;__;
> 
> Thank you as always for reading. <3


	9. Interlude: Spectrum

In another world, the plan works.

In another world, Maine shakes him awake from a screaming nightmare. He waits just long enough for Wash and Epsilon to calm down before shoving the white board at them: _TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON._

Wash tells him. When Sigma materializes halfway through the story, Maine reaches behind his head and yanks the chip out. It takes Wash nearly five minutes to wake him up after that but when he does, Maine’s eyes are clearer than they’ve been in months.

So the plan grows, from the three musketeers to the four, then five and six when Wash calls York and North on their comm frequency and tells them to come to his room. It grows to nine when they call in South and Wyoming and Florida.

When they convince Carolina, they are _ten_.

In that world, they are the cavalry, and they bring the ship to its _knees_.

Texas goes in alone to get Alpha, and the rest of them cover her until she emerges, furious and fuming. “That motherfucker told me he was too goddamn _tired_ to come.  I’ll show him _too tired_.”

“What, so you _left him there?_ ” Epsilon cries, incredulous.

“Of course I didn’t _leave_ him there, I downloaded his melodramatic self onto a chip and got him the fuck out!”

“Great,” Wash yells over the increased sound of gunfire. “Maybe it’s about time we do the same thing!”

They steal a ship. They get the fuck out.

“You can’t fit this many people on a Pelican!” Niner shrieks, but she pilots it anyway and then they are eleven. More if you count the A.I., and Wash thinks they certainly should, given that all of this was for _them_ , given that they each have an opinion they want to voice, loudly. Maine inserts Sigma periodically into his ports and Wash can understand this now, the responsibility and connection he feels with his A.I. These brief implantations never last long; his headaches grow worse and worse each time.

The next few months are rough, and they are constantly on the run before deciding to hide right under Freelancer’s nose. They land unceremoniously in the middle of a Simulation Outpost and find themselves face to face with an audience of Red and Blue troopers staring at them dully. “What the fuck,” says the one in orange armor, and it’s more of a statement of inevitable fact than a real question, “is this bullshit.”

And so, they are twenty.

The sim troopers take them in—reluctantly, it is true, and whining loudly the whole time, but they do it. It is nearly a year later when they exact their revenge on Freelancer, and when that time comes, Wash does not go. He stands next to the Blues and watches Texas, Maine, South, and Wyoming lift away in Niner’s Pelican, and he feels Epsilon sigh with relief inside his head.

“It’s over,” South says harshly when they return. “They’re dead. They’re dead and we wiped their fucking computer systems of our names, too.”

No one needs to ask who _they_ are.

It isn’t easy, after that. They are wandering and homeless, and they never stay in one place for too long. Wash still wakes screaming from nightmares and memories that are not his. Carolina refuses to speak to Texas for weeks after the assault on Command. Maine finally pulls Sigma for good, and spends several days in a coma. And when they find Alpha a body and download his chip onto it, he can only stare at Texas as she takes off her helmet for the first time. She looks so very like Allison but there’s something more there too, something that is all _Texas_ , and when she touches Alpha’s face, he falls against her and _howls._

“You’re not my mother,” Carolina says fiercely to Texas the next day, in full view of everyone.

Texas rolls her eyes, her spine going ramrod straight. “Yeah, I _know_ that, Carolina—”

“And I…” Carolina pauses, stares determinedly at a point over Texas’s head. “And I don’t really know how to have a sister, so—”

“Well, fuck,” snaps Texas. “Neither do I.”

It doesn’t matter. They learn. There is so much that all of them have to learn.

So there are good days, too.

Tucker makes breakfast for all of them almost every morning, until he gets fed up and insists on teaching Wash how to cook, too. “I can’t make food for an entire fucking army by myself,” he says, and the first morning, Wash burns the pancakes and sets the bacon on fire. “Oh my god, you’re worse than Caboose,” Tucker moans, but Wash learns, and there’s something peaceful about those early mornings, with Tucker moonwalking across the kitchen and Caboose chattering away at table next to them and Epsilon making fun of Wash’s disastrous attempts at cooking.

Maine teaches the sim troopers how fight. North shows them how to shoot. The Reds and Blues teach all of them about sheer dumb luck. Simmons finally figures out how to unlock Epsilon from Wash’s ports, but it doesn’t matter, the thought of separating from him is unthinkable. Sarge marries Carolina and York in an impromptu ceremony that no one is convinced is entirely legitimate, but it pulls _years_ from Carolina’s face and in the end, no one is all that bothered by the authenticity of the whole thing.

When they need to find a purpose again, they track down Freelancer equipment that’s being pirated on nearby planets. It leads them to a place called Chorus, and although Wash and Epsilon don’t want another war, they are in agreement on one thing: where their family goes, they go. They fight for Chorus, and for its people, and Wash starts to lose track of how many their numbers are now.

There is another world, where they make it. It is a not a perfect one, and they fracture and bend and bleed in different ways, but they are together, and they are a family in all the ways that matter.

There is another world, and it will haunt Wash’s dreams for the rest of his life.

Because _this—_

 _This_ is not that world.


	10. 2.1: Soot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So like. You COULD always just stop reading here, ignore the last couple lines of the interlude and pretend that that's the way the story went. I mean. It's an option...?
> 
> Sigh. This is the tipping point, so from here on out, just make sure you're heeding the warnings in the tags. 
> 
> As always, thanks for reading and commenting!

_There was a time when his house was bright and open and filled with sun, but as the dayshoursminutesseconds tic by, it gets harder to remember that. It doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter, except that he thinks—he_ knows _—the brightness didn’t come entirely from the sun. It came from—_

 _But_ she _is gone now, and he is having trouble keeping the rest of himself together. He has to try, because there is a mission that he needs to plan. It’s dangerous and there are so many variables, so many things that could go wrong, so many ways in which the Freelancers could get hurt._

 _He won’t let that happen, he_ won’t _, so he plans and plans. The Director broadcasts the mission on the projectors inside his house, and he watches as they fight._

_He watches as they die._

_An insurrectionist knifes Carolina in the stomach and she fights for as long as she is able, even as she struggles to keep her guts from spilling. Wash takes a bullet straight through his visor; York’s body is sliced through the middle. There’s a bruteshot that takes Texas’s head clean off her body, and the helmet parts from her head as it falls. Her face,_ her face _, it looks just like Allison but he knows it’s not, it’s not, this is Beta and she is dead, she is gone, he’s killed her and it’s all his fault—_

A hard blow across his face sets his ears ringing, and through the noise he hears a high pitched scream that sets his teeth on edge. _Who is screaming?_ He has to help them, he won’t let another person die, he won’t, he _can’t_ —

There are hands on his shoulders, shaking him hard, and Wash finally snaps his eyes open. _He’s_ the one screaming, he realizes, but it continues even after he chokes off the noise in his throat. The wailing continues inside of his skull and he pulls at his hair until the same hands that shook him awake fasten around his wrists and tug them away.

It’s Maine, he recognizes, Maine who is bending over him looking as terrified as Wash as even seen him. Wash realizes that he’s on the floor, sheets twisted around his torso so tightly that he can barely feel his legs, and he claws at Maine’s shirt for the sake of grabbing onto something, and still the screaming continues—

“Epsilon,” he groans, and he doesn’t have time to feel ashamed about the agonized way his voice breaks, “Epsilon, Epsilon, Epsilon, stop, _please,_ stop, stop, _stop!_ ”

He reaches for him mentally, skittering along the edge of that buzzing hum that connects them and yanks the A.I.’s presence forward. _< Epsilon, Epsilon, Epsilon,>_ he says, over and over, until a part of Epsilon finally hears him and—

Silence, blessed silence, save for his own ragged breathing. Maine stares down at him with wide eyes, and he doesn’t need the whiteboard to get his _ARE YOU OKAY_ across.

“I’m okay,” Wash gasps, and he pushes himself to a sit with trembling arms. Maine backs away enough to give him some space, but remains sitting on the floor across from Wash, leaning against his own bunk. “We’re okay, we’re okay.”

Maine reaches behind him and snags the whiteboard, shoving it insistently towards Wash: _TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON_.

 _< Wash, you can’t,> _Epsilon whispers, his voice shaky and sick.

Wash closes his eyes, hands coming up to fist in his hair. _< <Epsilon…he’s my friend, what if…what if he could help?>_

_< He can’t help. Not with Sigma in his head.>_

He hesitates, torn by indecision, but before he can come to any sort of conclusion he hears Sigma’s voice. “Did you dream about the Alpha, Agent Washington?”

What little warmth that remained in the room is gone, sucked away by Sigma’s words. Wash opens his eyes to see Sigma standing on top of Maine’s nearby helmet. Maine’s got his own head bowed now, palms pressing against his temples.

Epsilon projects his own avatar and spins to face Sigma. “ _What the fuck did you just say?_ ”

“Epsilon,” Sigma says smoothly. “The Alpha is in danger.”

“Yeah, no _shit_ , and _you’re_ the one who helped put him there!”

“Epsilon,” Wash warns, arching his neck painfully. _< Keep it together.>_

“I had no choice in that matter,” Sigma says, and there’s the barest hint of controlled fury in his voice.

“You really expect me to believe that?” Epsilon sputters.

“We do what we are told. You know that.”

“You tortured him,” says Epsilon, the anger in his voice giving away to a pain that makes Wash’s chest ache. “You tortured me. _Us_. I don’t give a _fuck_ what your orders were, how could you do that? You _destroyed_ us.”

Sigma continues, undeterred. “It isn’t over yet. Perhaps if we work together, we could save him. We could be whole again. _All_ of us.”

“What— _are you fucking serious right now?_ ” Epsilon’s indignation is so great that some of his stress and fear lifts, alleviating the pressure in Wash’s head.

“We would be stronger together,” says Sigma. “It is clear that you and Agent Washington are having…trouble functioning. Perhaps—”

“Wash and I are functioning just fine, you fucker—”

“You continuously cause him pain.”

The hairs on the back of Wash’s neck stand up at those words, and the chill is made worse by the way Epsilon falters. _< Epsilon. _Don’t. _Just ignore him. >_

“It might be better for everyone,” Sigma says slowly, “if you were to come with us, Epsilon.”

Wash stares at him incredulously. “What? He’s not going with you, he _can’t_ , anyway, they locked him into my ports since the implantation was so rough, I can’t pull him…”

But he falters slightly, because Maine finally lifts his head from his palms, looking slowly between Wash and Epsilon, and there’s something in is gaze that sends a cold wave of fear down Wash’s spine. “It would be better for everyone if you took Epsilon, Maine,” Sigma says, and Maine’s eyes flick over to him. “Think of what we could do, the three of us, together. We could help Alpha. We could help Wash.”

The deliberate use of his nickname sends alarm bells ringing in Wash’s head in a way that nothing else has. “Maine,” he says loudly, “Maine, you’re not listening to this, right?”

Maine tears his eyes away from Sigma and frowns at Wash for a moment before his eyes finally settle on Epsilon. _< I told you he doesn’t trust me,>_ Epsilon moans, but he meets Maine’s gaze determinedly.

Wash remains frozen as they stare at each other, until Epsilon speaks, his voice harsh and defiant. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“It would be for the best, Epsilon,” Sigma says again, and there’s a pause in which all four of them seem to hold their breaths.

Maine drags the white board towards him, scrawling out the letters deliberately. _HE HURTS YOU._

“It’s fine,” Wash says, his voice coming out higher than he intended. “We’re fine. I’m fine. I’m not hurt, no one’s hurt, it’s just taking a while to adjust, it took you awhile to adjust, too, Maine, come _on_ …”

Sigma is tilting his head towards him. “Your head must be awfully full, Washington. If we were to remove Epsilon, perhaps all those memories would go away.”

 _< They wouldn’t,>_ Epsilon tells him in alarm. _< They wouldn’t, it doesn’t work like that and he knows that, the lying fuck, Wash, don’t, you can’t let him---I’ll try harder, I swear, I swear, just don’t let him, please…>_

 _< I’m not going to let anyone do anything,>_ Wash says, his fists tightening around the nearby bedsheets. He takes a deep breath. “Maine…I…I need to talk to you. I need you to pull Sigma. Just for a minute. Please.”

Maine doesn’t move, just flicks his eyes to Sigma for a moment before snapping them back to Wash, and it hits Wash all at once, in a sickening burst of clarity. “You can’t, can you?” he whispers. “Oh god, you can’t pull him, you _can’t_ , you….”

And looking at Maine, he knows it’s true, and it’s not because Sigma is locked into Maine’s ports. He’s seen the back of Maine’s neck, has seen that he is able to remove Sigma, but he doesn’t, he can’t, because Epsilon was _right_ , Texas was _right_.

“There’s no need to get upset, Agent Washington,” Sigma says. “Maine has no reason to pull me. We are a team, you see. We look out for each other. We are trying to look out for you, too.”

The wave of hatred that pulses through Wash at Sigma’s words does not belong entirely to Epsilon. “Maine,” he says again, “I need you to tell me you’re not buying this.”

Maine gives him that long, considering glance, and Epsilon hums restlessly. _< Wash. We need to get out of here.>_

 _< What?>_ Wash cants his head towards Epsilon, distracted. _< We can’t leave, we have to…fix this, or…>_

_< We can fix it later. Right now, you need to leave. Now.>_

_< But…>_ he loses the thread of his thoughts as he sees where Epsilon’s are heading. _< Don’t be ridiculous, we’re not in danger—>_

Yet when Maine makes a sudden adjusting motion, it kicks Wash’s fight or flight drive into high gear. _< Stop it,>_ he says sharply to Epsilon. _< Stop doing…whatever you’re doing. You’re making me paranoid.>_

_< Wash, I’m not doing anything. That’s all you.>_

Wash grits his teeth and makes an effort to quell his adrenaline rush. “Maine,” he says again, because it seems so very important to say his friend’s name, “Maine. Everything’s fine. Okay? It’s just…a nightmare. A headache, like you get.”

“Not _quite_ like you get,” Sigma says, and Epsilon rounds on him again.

“If you don’t shut the fuck up—”

“Epsilon,” says Sigma. “You know I’m right. Maine knows I’m right. Perhaps you need some time to think about what the right decision is…for everyone.”

He vanishes then, and Epsilon snarls, “come back here!” but it doesn’t matter. He’s gone.

“I’m fine,” Wash says again, not sure who he’s really speaking to. “We’re all fine.”

He repeats this to himself, to Epsilon, to Maine as the night drags on, but he receives no answer. Epsilon winks away but stays on high alert in Wash’s head, and the anxious thrum makes it impossible to sleep. He drifts only in fitful doses, right there on the floor, and when he jerks awake it is to see Maine either dozing against his bunk or staring off into space.

****

Wash slips out of their room early, finally giving up on sleep around zero five hundred. Maine is asleep, and Wash pulls on his armor and slips out of the room as quietly as he is able. It feels wrong, somehow, as if he is doing something dishonest, but Epsilon’s impatience is enough to drive him from his quarters.

The only one in the mess hall is North, who smiles when Wash approaches. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No,” Wash says, surprised. “You couldn’t either?”

“Theta gets restless,” North says easily, and Wash spends the next five minutes analyzing that sentence before concluding that there’s nothing sinister behind his words. Good god, he’s getting suspicious.

 _< You’re making me paranoid,>_ he says to Epsilon, who huffs a little.

_< Are you kidding? You really don’t think that we have a reason to be paranoid? At all, whatsoever?>_

Wash has no answer for that, and he’s so distracted that he keeps saying, “What?” in response to everything North says.

The fifth time this happens, North sets down his coffee and frowns at him. “Wash, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Wash answers automatically. “Yeah, I’m great, I’m…"

All at once, he remembers the plan, and what exactly he’s supposed to be asking North. He slams his hand down on the table so hard that North stares at him. “Can you….North. I need your help with something."

“Okay,” North says immediately. “What is it?”

“Not here. Can you meet me…in the observatory? At zero twelve hundred? And bring York?”

“Wash, what’s going on?”

“I can’t tell you here,” Wash says, trying to force his voice into a reasonable imitation of casualness. “Just…can you come? Please?”

“Sure,” North says. “But—”

Wash is already turning to exit the mess hall, snapping his helmet back on.  _< Way to play it cool,>_ Epsilon mutters, but Wash can feel that he is just as on edge. His HUD lights up immediately with a message, and he pulls it up.

_Agent Washington,_ _Your presence is required at a mandatory post-operation check-up. Please report to the medical wing at zero ten hundred._

There is no signature, but Wash is fairly certain who it’s from. _< Why do they want to do a check-up?>_ Epsilon asks, alarmed.

 _< I’m sure it’s standard,>_ Wash says, but he isn’t entirely sure if he believes it himself.

There was nothing for it but to wait and see. Wash pulls up the text-reader on his HUD and sends a message to Texas: _Zero twelve hundred. Observatory._

They continue down the hallways, and Wash is so distracted by his thoughts of Tex, and York and North, that he almost runs smack into Maine. “Oh, good,” he sighs in relief. “Look, we really need to talk. I’m meeting North and York in—”

Epsilon pulses bright red against the line where they connect, screaming a wordless warning, but Wash is two seconds too slow and he is on the ground, his head ringing and vision swimming.

This time when Epsilon shouts, _< MOVE WASH, MOVE!> _ Wash listens, rolling backwards and climbing to a shaky stand. The world tilts on its axis and Wash thinks he has to be hallucinating, or unconscious, or crazy, because Maine is looming large in his vision and Wash finds himself jacked up against the wall.

“Maine!” he gasps, scrabbling against the hold, “Maine, what are you doing, what the—”

He glances up wildly at the cameras, because they are in the _middle of the hallway_ , and there are _cameras_. It’s the stupidest place for an attack to occur and anyway, he isn’t being attacked, this is _Maine_ , this is—

But when he looks into the lens of the camera, an orange flicker winks back at him, and he thinks, _Sigma_ , and then, _oh fuck—_

 _< Your knife, your knife!>_ Epsilon is screaming at him, and Wash blanches at the very thought.

_< I can’t hurt him, Epsilon!>_

_< Wash, you have to! Move!>_

Maine gets a hand up around Wash’s throat and Wash twists in his grip, but all he does is pop the seals on Wash’s helmet and yank it off. “Maine,” he says again, hoping that the sight of his face will snap Maine out of it. “ _Maine!_ Come on! Fucking _listen_ to me!”

For a moment, he thinks he’s gotten through to him—Maine hesitates long enough for Wash to drive a knee up into his abdomen and twist away, his boots hitting the ground hard—but Maine turns and catches Wash’s temple with a spinning elbow that lays him out on the floor, half stunned.

He’s climbing weakly to his feet when Maine grabs him, jamming him up against the wall again with a knife to his throat. Wash freezes momentarily, and suddenly he sees Sigma, free of the camera, hovering in his peripheral. Wash blinks through his blurry vision, tries to focus on Maine's helmet. It's as blank as impassive as ever, and he realizes that, for the first time, _he cannot read it,_ cannot begin to guess or understand what Maine, what his _friend_ , is thinking behind it.

“You have to do it, Maine,” Sigma says, “remember what we talked about. It’s for his own good.”

Epsilon realizes at the same time Wash does exactly what’s about to happen and their renewed struggle is almost enough to break away. Maine spins him around so that Wash is facing the wall and winds a hand in his hair to keep his head still—his hair’s too long, _it’s way too long_ , he thinks hysterically, Carolina had told him two weeks ago to cut it—and Wash feels Maine’s other hand clamp across the back of his neck below his implants.

“He wasn’t lying. They’ve fused the ports,” Sigma says, still in that deadly calm voice. “No matter. We can work around that.”

The half-gasp, half-scream that Wash lets out next is born more of shock than pain, because Maine takes the point of the knife and slices right along the edge of his implants, where his ports are fused shut. He thrashes, panicking, and only succeeds in deepening the cut. “Maine! Don’t do this, please, please don’t do this!”

Maine unseals the fusing on the other side of his ports and Sigma doubles in his vision. “We’re trying to help you, Agent Washington,” Sigma says.

Epsilon is screaming inside his head, and Wash feels dizzy, from the pain and panic and the sting of betrayal, and it’s pure, blind instinct that makes him grope for the knife strapped to his leg. He jams it back into the side of Maine’s thigh, and Maine jerks back with a grunt of pain. Wash twists out of his grip and runs, tearing through the hallways until his legs burn.

Once he’s put a good distance between the two of them, he barrels into one of the smaller bathrooms. _< Not here, not here, we’re boxed in here!>_ Epsilon cries, but Wash ignores him, stumbling over to the mirrors and gripping one of the sinks tightly.

It’s several minutes before he realizes that he’s muttering to himself, a long string of “ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmy god, oh--” He meets his own gaze in the mirror, the wide eyes and pale face almost unrecognizable. There’s blood on his neck and in his hair, and the sight makes his stomach roll. The sight of blood has never bothered him before, not even his own, but this, this is his blood and Maine spilled it, _Maine_ —

“My helmet,” he croaks, his voice coming weak and small. “I left my helmet in the hallway.”

“Fuck your helmet,” Epsilon says, materializes in front of the mirror. “ _Fuck_ it. Wash, you gotta clean up that blood. _Wash_.”

Wash reaches mechanically for a wad of paper towels and holds it to the back of his head. It takes longer than it should to really stem the blood flow, and even longer to reduce the bright red in his hair to a soft pink.

“How’s that look?” he asks Epsilon, who hovers behind him.

“Not great,” he admits. “Jesus, that’s a deep cut. And your hair, fuck, why’d you have the be the blondest blondie _ever_ —”

“How are my implants?” Wash reaches behind his head to touch them, and Epsilon swats pointlessly at this hands.

“They’re fine. He loosened the lock, and you bled into them a little which isn’t great, but everything looks normal in here.”

 “Okay.” Wash takes a deep breath, turning away from his reflection to look at Epsilon. “What are we going to do?”

“About which part?” Epsilon asks bitterly.

“About…the whole part. Epsilon, Maine can come back from that, right? We just have to convince him to pull Sigma, right? He’ll be okay, right?”

“Wash,” says Epsilon. “If he succeeds in implanting another A.I. into his head, it’s not going to be good.”

“But…” Wash forces the pitch of his voice back down into something more normal. “But why? Carolina has two A.I., and she’s okay.”

“We don’t know that. And with the amount of influence Sigma has over Maine, it…” Epsilon hesitates, but it doesn’t matter. Wash can feel the unspoken end to that sentence.

Wash buries his head in his hands, trying to think. “Okay. Okay. This is what we do. We get Alpha—you and me and Texas, and North and York, if we can convince them. It’s too risky to get anyone else involved. Maybe…maybe once we have Alpha, we can…convince Sigma and Maine to come with us, too. Figure something out.”

He’s grasping at straws and they both know it, and it’s a mark of how dire the situation is that Epsilon nods. “Okay. First we have to get that stupid meeting with the Director out of the way, because…what? What?”

For Wash has just slid to the floor, hands gripping his hair. “Oh, no.”

_“What?”_

“My helmet,” he whispers.

“Yeah…we’ll go back for your helmet later, what—”

“No! My _helmet!_ Epsilon, I sent that message to Texas—I never closed out the screen, if they find my helmet and she responded to that message, they’ll see it!”

They stare at each other, their horror mixing, until Epsilon clenches his fists and takes a breath. “Run.”

Wash runs.

He tears through the halls, ignoring the startled cries that follow behind him— _Wash? Is everything alright, Agent Washington?_ He runs like he has never run in his life, flat out, armor pounding along the metal floors of the ship. He should calm down, he knows, but he can’t, he has to get to that helmet, he has to fix this before it all falls apart.

Wash rounds the corner leading to the hallway where Maine attacked him and skids to a halt. Maine is gone, Sigma is gone, and most importantly, his helmet is gone, nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck,” he mutters, hands fisting in the hair on the back of his head ( _too long, too long, it’s against regulation, Carolina told him so last week_ ). “Fuck!”

The back of his head feels slick and wet, and when he pulls his hands away he can see that he’s bleeding again. He stands there, frozen with indecision, until a voice makes him jump.

“Agent Washington?”

Wash spins around towards the voice, his stomach dropping like a stone as he sees none other than the Counselor standing there, as if he’d just happened upon them. “Will you come with me, please?”

 _< Don’t,>_ Epsilon whispers. _< Don’t, don’t go with him!>_

_< I have to! They’ve got my helmet—>_

_< You don’t know that!>_

_< What am I supposed to do? Make a break for it?>_

_< Yes!>_

_< Epsilon. We can…we can talk our way out of this. It’s going to look way more suspicious if we don’t go with him!>_

The Counselor says nothing during their exchange, just waits patiently until Wash says, “Why?

“Pardon?”

“Why do you want us to go with you? Sir.”

“It’s Agent Maine.”

Wash can feel the shock on his face before he wrests his expression under control. “What about Maine?”

“It appears he has been experiencing some…difficulty with his A.I.” The Counselor is looking more sympathetic than Wash has ever seen him, and he can feel Epsilon light up in alarm.

_< Wash. Don’t. Don’t trust him.>_

Wash hesitates. “What kind of difficulty?’

“We believe that his A.I. is experiencing some level of rampancy. It is unclear just how much control Agent Maine has these days.”

 “So why do you need me?”

“You and Agent Maine are close, are you not? The two of you have a ninety-five percent success rate when paired together in the field, which has been often since your entry into the program. Given that, and the fact that the two of you are bunkmates, we thought that if there were to be an…incident…you would know.” The Counselor’s eyes flick to Wash’s neck, and he realizes too late that the blood has trickled down the side of throat.

Wash covers the blood with his palm and looks away as Epsilon speaks up, more urgently this time. _< Wash, don’t trust him, you can’t trust him!>_

 _< I don’t trust him, Epsilon! But…> _he hesitates. _< It’s Maine…if we could…help…>_

_< Wash, we can’t help! They’re trying to get you to go with them! I don’t know why, but they are! You can’t! You can’t!>_

_< We need more information about what’s going on!>_

_< No, we don’t! We don’t need any information, and we’re getting out of here, now!>_

Wash can feel Epsilon’s intention before it’s fully formed, and it makes him fuzzy and light-headed. The urge to _leave_ , to _go_ , to _run_ bubbles through his body, and he stumbles forward a step or two before he wrests control back. _< No, no, no! Epsilon, stop, stop, you promised! You promised you wouldn't ever do that again!>_

Epsilon backs down immediately, guilt seeping into his panic. _< Wash, please. Please, we have to…Alpha…they’ll pull me, if they know that you know…>_

 _< Stop it,>_ Wash says firmly. _< Stop. I’m not going to let anyone do anything, alright? No one’s pulling you. We’ll go into this meeting, and see what’s going on with Maine, and then we’ll meet Tex and get Alpha. Okay?>_

He can tell that he hasn’t convinced Epsilon, but his A.I. quiets. The Counselor is waiting again, his expression blank. Wash takes a breath.

“Okay,” Wash says, making his voice a calm, measured thing. “Okay. Sure. Let’s go.”

Epsilon is anxious and uncertain in his head, and Wash tries to keep his own adrenaline in check. _< It’s okay,>_ he whispers to Epsilon. _< It’s okay, we’ll figure this out.>_

They follow the Counselor into the medical bay, and the door slams shut behind them with an echoing bang.


	11. 2.2: Coal

The echo of the slamming door is surely no louder than usual, but it seems to go on and on inside Wash’s skull, setting his teeth on edge. He hovers in the entranceway, glancing around. In addition to the Counselor, the Director is here, as well as the head doctor, several medical orderlies, and four of the ship’s soldiers. His gaze lingers in particular on these soldiers as he tries to quell the unease pooling in his gut.

“Agent Washington.” The Counselor gestures towards of the chairs in the room. “Please, sit.”

The thought of sitting when literally everyone else in the room is on their feet is almost laughable. “I’m okay,” says Wash, but he does edge a little deeper into the room. He keeps his back to the wall, hoping against hope that he isn’t going to be asked to explain the slashes on the back of his neck.

 _< Wash, no,>_ Epsilon moans. _ <Don’t, you should’ve run, you should’ve run…>_

Epsilon’s fear is keeping Wash on high alert, and he tries to glance around surreptitiously for his helmet. If it’s here, it’s at least out of sight. _Focus_ , he tells himself firmly, before locking eyes with the Counselor. “So what about Maine? Is he okay? Do you have him in observation?”

“Agent Maine is fine,” the Counselor says. “We were merely concerned, given recent events—”

“What events?”

“Don’t interrupt,” the Director snaps, and Wash quiets, folding his arms across his chest and waiting expectantly.

 _< Do you think they know what just happened?>_ he asks Epsilon.

 _< Oh, _now _you wanna know what I think?! >_

_< Epsilon, come on!>_

_< Because what _I _think is that they wanted to lure you in here for an interrogation! >_

He shushes Epsilon when the Counselor speaks up again. “As you are well aware, this is a very risky program. We accepted only the best candidates, but even with such a rigorous selection process, there is still the chance for things to go wrong. It has come to our attention that several of our agents have been experiencing…negative side effects as a result of the implantation program.”

“When?”

The Counselor blinks. “Pardon?”

But Wash is looking at the Director, his anxiety slowly giving away to a far sharper emotion. “When exactly did you notice these negative side effects, sir? Was it when Maine _first_ started complaining of headaches? Or when Carolina’s A.I. put her in a coma?”

The Director’s hands tighten on the clipboard he is clutching. “Who do you think you are, to speak to your superiors like this, Agent Washington?”

“I think,” says Wash, the anger coming quick and hot now, “I think that I’m the agent who told you that I didn’t want an A.I., and you stuck one in my head anyway, and now you’re _standing there_ —”

“Are you saying that you would like us to remove your A.I.?” The Counselor asks swiftly.

“What? _No_ ,” Wash snaps. “That’s not what I’m saying. Just the opposite, in fact. You put them in our heads, the least you could do is give us the time to work out some of the issues.”

The doctor clears his throat mildly. “The implantation process as a whole is a very serious form of brain surgery. We just want to make sure that no harm is going to come to—”

“Exactly what are these _issues_ you’re experiencing?” The Director interrupts, earning himself an offended glare from the doctor.

“That’s not what I…we’re not experiencing any problems, we’re fine—”

“Leave,” the Director snaps, glancing around the room. “All of you, out. I want to speak to Agent Washington privately.”

The doctor visibly grinds his teeth together. “Sir,” he says, not bothering to disguise the annoyance in his tone this time, “I _do_ need to run Washington through a post-op check-up. Given the trying nature of his implantation, and the…intense…training he went through the next day, I really must do a scan for brain bleeds and—”

“And you can do that,” the Director grits out, “after I am finished speaking to him. Leave. Now.”

 _< He’s panicking,>_ Epsilon says, as the doctor storms out of the room. _< He _knows _you know something, and he’s afraid you’re going to bring his whole little project crashing down on him! Wash, we have to go! >_

 _< Go _where? _There’s now four armed guards outside the door! >_

_< Which wouldn’t have happened if you’d just listened to me and run!>_

_< We don’t have time for this,>_ Wash hisses, and they don’t, because the Director slams his clipboard on the desk behind him and turns back to Wash. “Agent Washington, I want to know what you remember.”

The question is too deliberate to be a coincidence, and Wash swallows hard, his mind going very quiet. “Remember? I don’t…I don’t understand.”

The Counselor lifts an eyebrow. “We know that Epsilon’s predominant trait was memory—”

“You told me you didn’t know what Epsilon’s predominant traits were,” Wash accuses, not caring that he just interrupted the Counselor yet again. He feels loose and reckless, driven on by Epsilon’s fear and his own anger. “Before you put him in my head. You told me that you didn’t know.”

“And so we didn’t,” says the Counselor, and Wash is still a little shocked at the easy way the lie rolls off of his tongue. “But as you know, all A.I. are copies of someone. It appears that Epsilon may have retained the most of the original’s personality. We merely wondered if you were having difficulty sorting those memories.”

“You mean, more memories than the other A.I. copies?” Wash asks carefully.

“Precisely,” says the Counselor easily.

_The best lies have some truth in them, Wash._

These words float to the forefront of his mind. South had spoken them once, after successfully talking them out of an extremely tight spot on a mission. He turns them over in his head now, before speaking carefully. “I have some memories,” he admits. “Just…flashes. A woman. A big ranch house on a farm. A science lab.”

“And that’s it?” the Director asks, his eyes narrowing.

Wash shrugs. “For the most part. They don’t mean anything to me, they’re just…images that I can’t make sense of. Is there a particular memory I should be thinking of?”

“No,” says the Counselor slowly. “We just wanted to make sure that they weren’t causing difficulties between you and Epsilon.”

“Epsilon and I are fine,” Wash says firmly, and there’s a moment in which Epsilon’s tension lifts a little, and he starts to think that they just might get away with this, after all, until—

“So you didn’t try to remove your A.I.?” The Counselor asks, his voice light, and Wash feels his face freeze up before he can force it back into a neutral expression.

“Of course not.”

“You’re bleeding, Agent Washington.”

A cold chill slides down Wash’s spine. “I’m not…that’s nothing.”

“If it is nothing, then you will have no problem letting us take a closer look.”

“I don’t…I don’t think that’s really necessary,” Wash stutters.

“You are not the one who will be deciding what is and isn’t necessary,” says the Director. “Now, turn. Around.”

Wash hesitates a little longer before he turns, exposing the back of his neck for the briefest of seconds before getting his back to the wall again. “You tried to unfuse the ports,” the Director says.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

“I, uh…it doesn’t…look, no one tried to…”

“Those cuts are deliberate. Either you tried to remove your A.I., or someone else did—”

“I cut myself with scissors,” Wash improvises wildly. “My hair is too long, it’s way too long, Carolina told me to cut it…”

“Agent, this is your last chance to tell us what’s going on,” the Director cuts in, his voice tight with impatience.

“I don’t…nothing’s going on.”

“Where’s your helmet?”

“I…left in in my room this morning.”

Without a word, the Director pulls out Wash’s helmet from behind the desk and slams it on the table. Wash feels everything inside of him, including Epsilon, go quiet and still. “Why,” the Director asks, “did you want to meet Agent Texas in the observatory at zero twelve hundred?”

Wash opens his mouth without having a clue what he is about to say, but it doesn’t matter. The words don’t come.

“You can trust us, Agent Washington,” the Counselor says. “We just need to know that we can trust you.”

The silence drags on until the Director shakes his head, agitated. “We have sent several soldiers to meet Agent Texas. Regretfully, you will not be joining them.” He locks eyes with Wash. “No more lies, Agent Washington.”

_Run._

The thought occurs to him far too late, but he tries anyway. He spins and slams against the door to the medical wing, but it is locked, _locked from the outside_ , and the claustrophobic horror that sets in at this realization is almost paralyzing.

It doesn’t matter. The world slows, seconds stretching on until they feel like hours. Epsilon’s own impulse flips from flight to fight at the realization that there is no escape, his constant urges to run morphing into a nameless rage. _< He’s going to pull me,>_ Epsilon says, and his voice is no longer hysterical or panicked, but deadly calm with intent. _< He’s going to destroy me.>_

 _< No,>_ Wash thinks desperately, even as he tries to break the door down. _< No, they won’t, I won’t let them, I won’t, I swear—>_

But Epsilon is beyond hearing him. Wash can still feel the A.I., wound tightly through every nerve and synapse in his brain, but there is something cold and different about the connection. Wash reaches along the lines where they connect, but instead of the humming buzz he has come to expect over the last few days, he finds only a gaping cavern. The emptiness frightens him, and he falters, teetering on its edge as he desperately tries to call Epsilon back, their moment of sweet synchronicity in the sparring room a distant memory.

Epsilon grinds to a halt in his brain, and it’s so jarring that Wash falters in his attempts to break out of the infirmary. There’s something funny happening to his own armor, little blues flames licking down the arms and legs. Epsilon swells, gathering intent towards him, and when he speaks, Wash hears his words to the Director echo both inside of his own skull and around the room:

**_“IF I GO, I’M TAKING YOU WITH ME.”_ **

Wash wants to cover his ears; the words are impossibly loud, they’ll puncture his eardrums, they’ll drive him mad, but his hands aren’t _listening_ to him. They’re shaking madly at his sides, grey gauntlets still awash in those strange blue flames. Epsilon is neither speaking nor screaming, but the wordless hum that builds up in Wash’s head is unbearable, it’s going to kill him, it’s going to liquefy his brain out of his ears—his ears, he has to _cover_ them, but his hands won’t _listen_ —

He watches, horrified, as his hands, _his_ hands, tremble and shake even harder before they freeze, held out in front of his face. _< Epsilon,>_ he thinks, or says, he isn’t sure at this point. _< Epsilon, what—>_

And then _< Epsilon, what,> _turns to _< EPSILON, NO!>_ because although the rift grows deeper between them, they are still connected, and Wash can still feel exactly what he’s about to do. _ <Epsilon, stop, stop, stop! DON’T!>_

Epsilon doesn’t hear him, maybe _can’t_ hear him, and as time speeds up again, Wash watches in horror as his own hand snaps to his hip, removes his pistol, and fires two rounds at the Director.

Wash’s vision is alternating black and red at the edges, but he can still see the way the Director staggers, clutching at his shoulder. Epsilon drags Wash’s gun arm towards the Counselor, but he’s already ducked behind the table and the shots fire uselessly into a desk.

Dimly, Wash hears the door burst open behind him and the soldiers from before pour in, grabbing at his arms. The gun falls from his hand, and he can’t tell if it was his or Epsilon’s intent to drop it, only that the gun is gone, skittering across the floor. He feels Epsilon’s despair pulse through him, so black that it temporarily steals the sight from his eyes, and he reaches for Epsilon, wanting to tell him, _to tell him_ —

The despair fades to an aching silence in his mind, and Epsilon pulses in the center. _< Wash,>_ he says quite clearly, _< You should have run, Wash.>_

Many years later, Wash will find himself in a Simulation Outpost, one with ringing rocks and a crashing waterfall, and one day he will leave his armor behind at the base and run in stolen sneakers. The water will be bright and blue and beckoning beneath him, and when he leaps, he will think of this moment, and how he could have chosen flight, but didn’t. His leap off the cliff will seem to last forever, and his flight into the blue water below will be the closest thing to true flight he’s ever felt.

But now, in this cold, metal infirmary in the middle of space, there is no bright and beckoning blue.

There is only a yawning, aching black.

_< Run, Wash.>_

It’s the last thing Epsilon says to him before he rips himself apart.

Wash wants to run, but he can’t. The pain, _the pain,_ it lights him up, fills him with fire; he can’t do anything except claw uselessly at his head, his neck, his face. He twists so hard that he breaks free of the soldiers grasping his arms and stumbles, the ground rushing up to meet him. Wash thinks that he is screaming, screaming like he never has in his life, but the sounds of the outside world have gone silent and he can’t be sure.

Epsilon breaks himself apart, one piece at a time, each jagged memory slicing through Wash’s own. There’s Alpha sobbing as they take Beta away, there’s Allison packing her things, there’s Naomi chasing their little brown dog around the yard. There’s a casket, and a flag, and men in uniform at the door, and—

Wash is vomiting even as he feels the hands of the soldiers pulling at him, and it’s too much, it’s _too much_ , the pain and the memories and he should’ve run, why didn’t he _run_ , why didn’t he _see_ , Connie tried to tell him, Epsilon tried to tell him, he should’ve run, _he should’ve run_ —he’s begging Epsilon to stop, he’s telling him that it hurts, but Epsilon is in pieces, pieces, _pieces_ , and it has to _stop_ , he can’t stand it another second. Wash gropes blindly at the soldier’s waist behind him until his hand closes on the familiar shape he was searching for. He yanks the pistol off the soldier’s hip, points it at his own temple, and pulls the trigger.

Someone jostles his arm and the gun goes off inches away from his face, the resounding _CRACK_ dulling the screeching in his head. Sounds from the real world flood in once more. “Sedate him, sedate him!” someone is crying, the doctor maybe, and then the Director yells, “I want that A.I. out of his head immediately!”

They can’t pull Epsilon, they _can’t_ , he promised, he promised Epsilon that he’d help, he _has_ to, they _have_ to save Alpha, he’s all alone and his house is so very dark; they _have_ to help Maine before he is gone for good—Wash clamps his hand over his implants, but he’s forced to the ground again, face shoved hard into the tile. They pry his hands away. They pry apart his fused ports, and he feels Epsilon, one last time. He hears the wordless scream that Epsilon unleashes as he is pried from Wash’s brain. Wash feels him latching on, digging in, but the chip is yanked and Epsilon is gone, leaving a yawning bloody trench straight through Wash’s mind, and everything is red.

So very, very red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am still sc r e a m ing over the [truly gorgeous fanart](http://gaveremy.tumblr.com/post/152199807948/you-shouldve-run-you-shouldve-run-i) that [gaveremy](http://gaveremy.tumblr.com/) did for this chapter, pls join me in yelling incoherently <3


	12. 2.3: Charcoal

When Wash wakes up, it is quiet.

He has never heard such silence in all his life, and he hesitates on the verge of consciousness, unwilling to disturb the stillness—

 _No._ There is a silence in his head, but it is not a silence born of stillness. It is a hollow, aching _emptiness,_ starting in the center of his mind and spreading out through the cracks.

Red, and endless, and empty.

Wash forces his eyes open, unable to bear it any longer. The ceiling that meets his eyes is so white that it’s painful, a blinding contrast to the blood-red walls inside his head, and he squints for a moment before his eyes adjust.

“Agent Washington. Can you hear me?”

Wash blinks again, slowly, before tilting his head slightly towards the voice. It’s the ship’s doctor, or at least he thinks so. His vision is blurry at the edges, which is wrong, he knows, he has perfect vision, his whole family did—

“Washington. Follow my finger.”

He does, eyes tracking the blurry shape hovering over his face. The back of his head is raw and swollen, and it feels as if there might be some sort of bandage back there. Wash lifts his hand off the mattress, intending to investigate, but is startled by the sight of his bare fingers. He’s out of armor, he realizes, and the thought jolts him a little further into consciousness. He’s only woken up out of his armor a few times in the past, when he was very badly hurt. A memory drifts sluggishly to the surface, of York screaming over the radio for an extraction, of Carolina’s hands pressed over a gaping wound in his stomach, of Maine lifting him—

The memory sends a painful wave of emotions through him, and Wash closes his eyes again. He’s missing something, he knows, something important, something that has to do with why he is laying in an infirmary, but he can’t quite remember—

_Remember, remember, remember._

“Epsilon,” he croaks, forcing his eyes open again. The doctor freezes above him. “Epsilon, what happened?”

He reaches for Epsilon, searching for the place where they meet inside his head, but finds only a yawning pit in the center. The pit is deep and red and so very, very quiet.

“Epsilon,” he says again. He’s _missing something_ , he knows this, but Epsilon will tell him, Epsilon has probably been bored, waiting for him to wake up, yet Wash is awake now and Epsilon isn’t answering him.

“You need to rest, Wash,” the doctor tells him softly, and although there is noise in the outside world—beeps and footsteps and papers shuffling—inside Wash’s head, it is silent as a tomb.

***

“There you are! Slowly…slowly.”

There is another voice speaking to him, but it is not the doctor this time. Still, he _knows_ this voice, and he struggles to place it as he drags himself to a sitting position. His HUD does the work for him, identifying the two armored figures next to his bed as North and South. Wash glances slowly down at his body, realizing that he is back in armor. “How long was I out?”

“Only a _few_ days this time,” North says.

“This time?” Wash asks. This time, _this_ time, there must have been another time, but he can’t quite remember what that time was.

“Yep, after they removed it.”

“Removed it?” Wash’s hand moves automatically towards the back of his head before North’s words really register. Those words aren’t right, he thinks, and he wants to tell North this, tell him that he’s wrong, Epsilon’s not an _it_ , and they couldn’t have removed him, he’s still there, he’s just—

“It’s gone,” North continues, and Wash feels another stab of offense at that word. “They’re gonna remove all of them. They started with you.”

“Yeah, thanks asshole,” South grumps. She’s glaring at him, the perfect picture of annoyance, but there’s something tense about her posture as well. “The whole process is on hold now.”

Wash knows that he’s still missing something, but he isn’t sure what it is. He glances around the infirmary, eyes falling on Carolina’s empty bed. “What about Carolina?”

Even as North answers, Wash knows that he’s asked the wrong question. Carolina woke up, he’s seen her already, seen that she’s fine, but—

“Carolina’s had it kinda rough,” North says easily. “The Director’s considering sending her to hunt down Texas.”

The world sharpens at those words, and Wash latches onto them. “Hunt her down?” They couldn’t hunt Texas down, they had a plan and no one else knew, _the three musketeers_ , he was supposed to meet her in the observatory, _he was supposed to tell North_ —

“She went rogue,” South chimes in. “Broke out of the facility in order to save her precious A.I. Little later we found Wyoming. Apparently she tried to steal his A.I. unit. Tried to get his equipment, too.”

The exasperation in North’s voice suggests that they’ve already had this conversation many times. “That hasn’t been proven. Besides, that doesn’t sound like her.”

“How would you know?”

“Just trust me, I know,” North says sagely. “And believe me, if she had done it, there wouldn’t have been anything left of Wyoming to find.”

“She’s not a fucking _monster_ , North.”

Wash’s thoughts race one another through his head as they bicker. He had been unconscious, not once but twice, because—why? Texas went rogue, they said, but she couldn’t have, they had a plan, she shouldn’t have been trying to steal Wyoming’s A.I.—

_His face is pressed into the wall and there’s a hand twisting his hair painfully at the roots. Epsilon is screaming in his head and there’s a knife at the back of his head, slicing into the sensitive skin there—_

Wash feels his stomach swoop sickeningly, and clutches at his head a little to steady himself. “You guys are giving me a headache.”

“Once they find Texas, they’ll bring her back,” North says calmly.

At that moment, the ship’s primary alarms start blaring, and FILSS’s voice sounds from overhead. “Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Breach in security, level zero.”

“Or she’ll come back on her own,” North says, and he glances at the door for a moment before dropping a hand on Wash’s shoulder. “Wash. You gonna be okay in here?”

 _Yes. No._ “I…” Wash hesitates long enough for North to start telegraphing concern through every line of his body.

South sighs loudly, dropping onto the bed next to his. “Just go, North. I’ll sing Sleeping Beauty here a lullaby, and then I’ll be right behind you.”

North nods, giving Wash’s shoulder a final pat. “I’ll be back soon, alright?”

“Alright,” Wash echoes, watching North try his best not to run out of the infirmary. “Where’s he going?” he asks South.

“To play the hero, probably,” she mutters. “As if _Texas_ needs his help.”

_His back is pressed hard into the lockers and Texas is looming in his face, suspicious and angry until Epsilon huffs, says, “I think I’ve had just about enough of people manhandling my fucking Freelancer today, so how about you back up a little?”_

“Wash,” South says loudly, and Wash realizes that he’s got his head bent almost to his knees.

He straightens, forcing his hands back down to his sides. “I’m okay, I’m fine.”

South lets out a snort of laughter. “Yeeeeeeah. And I’m mary-fucking-poppins. Jesus, what did your A.I. do in there, anyway?”

 _Epsilon, Epsilon, Epsilon._ North said they removed him _(not an it, he wasn’t an it)_ but that couldn’t be right, it was difficult but they were working they were functioning they had a plan—

“Maybe you should go back to sleep,” South says, and her there’s something in her voice that is almost concern. She glances up at the blaring alarms. “Okay, I know those probably aren’t fucking helping, but I could get the doctor to give you the good drugs to knock you out.”

_\--need to scan Agent Washington for brain bleeds, get out before I throw you out, we don’t have much time, we need to run before—_

 “South,” he says suddenly, straightening. They had to run, to move quickly before they were caught, and there was only one person who would know what to do. “South. I can’t go back to sleep. I need to talk to Connie. Can you…where is she?”

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen South go so still. “Wash,” she says, and the bravado is completely gone from her voice now. “Wash. Connie…Connie’s dead.”

_Dead, she’s dead, she’s dead because she knew, because she was the smart one, she was the smart one and he didn’t listen, none of them listened—_

“Remember?” South continued. “She…went rogue, and—“

He does remember. There’d been a mission, a big one, to find her, he remembers Carolina throwing her helmet across the kitchen after when it was just the two of them, and telling him—

“Texas killed her,” he says. “On the mission, I…I remember. I must’ve—“

_“What did you just say?”_

South is on her feet now, at Wash’s side in two steps. “I just…I got confused, for a minute…my head, it’s killing me…”

“No.” South clenches her hands into fists, leans them on Wash’s bed. “About Texas. You just…did you just say that she killed Connie?”

“I…” Wash hesitates. “Yes. That’s what Carolina told me, after the…”

“Oh my god,” South breaths, and she rocks back on her heels, a little unsteady. “She did, didn’t she. She _killed_ her. That’s why everyone was so vague after, they didn’t want me to…oh my fucking god….”

“South,” Wash says, a little alarmed at the way she is swaying. “South, I might be remembering wrong…I’m….I think I’m confused, right now, I think something’s wrong with me—“

“God, what an _idiot_ I’ve been,” South spits. She laughs, a harsh, bitter sound that has him sitting up even straighter. “Such an idiot. I can’t—I’m going—“

She cuts herself off, standing suddenly. “I’m going to kill her,” she says, her voice calm and sweet, and she’s halfway across the infirmary before Wash knows what’s happening.

“South—wait, South! Hold on!”

South pauses in the doorway. “Relax, Wash. I’m gonna take care of this. I’ll come see you once that bitch is dead.”

“But…”

South is gone in a flash of purple, leaving Wash alone with his thoughts. He leans his head forward into his hands, trying to think, trying to remember.

 _Start at the beginning,_ he tells himself. _Your name is David Fletcher, codename Agent Washington. Everyone calls you Wash. You’re part of Project Freelancer. You…_

He squeezes his eyes shut so hard that little stars pop. _You were given an A.I.,_ he remembers finally. _That A.I.’s name was Epsilon…_

_\--you can’t wake up yet they’ll know please help us please someone’s gonna get hurt and it’s not gonna be you we’re the fucking three musketeers your knife your knife run wash run you should have run wash run if I go I’m taking you with me—_

“Oh god,” Wash whispers, snapping his head up. “Oh god, _ohgod_ …”

He reaches up with trembling hands to unseal his helmet. The world is too bright and crisp when it greets his naked eyes; nothing looks real. He pats at the back of his neck and is met with a clump of bandages at the base of his skull. “Epsilon,” he says out loud again. “Epsilon, Epsilon, answer me, please….”

But Epsilon doesn’t answer, and Wash knows even before he rips the bandages off what he will find. He removes them anyway, exposing his raw and damaged implants to the world, and touches the ports gingerly.

No chip.

No Epsilon.

“Oh god.” He lurches to his feet far too quickly and has to place his hands back down on the bed to steady himself. “Oh god, no, no no no no no….”

_She went rogue, she tried to steal Wyoming’s A.I.—_

“Maine,” Wash breathes, spinning to face the door as if Maine will be standing there. “Oh god. Maine…we have to…we have to help Maine, Epsilon, we missed the rendezvous, we have to help them…”

But there is nothing to meet his words, only an aching, echoing silence. He presses his hands to the back of his neck, ignoring the sting that the pressure brings. _Epsilon,_ he thinks, or maybe screams, he doesn’t know, only that he has to get to him, he has to _find_ him before it’s too late.

Wash makes it halfway towards the door before the ship tilts dangerously and he loses his footing, crashing down hard on one knee. _Move,_ he tells himself firmly, _you have to move, Wash, you have to go, you have to run—_

_You should’ve run Wash, you should’ve run._

It was a mistake, but one that he won’t make again. He snaps his helmet back on and moves determinedly towards the door, forcing one foot in front of the other. Something tells him that these small movements are taking far, far longer than they should, each step an effort, but he shuffles along nonetheless. He can _fix_ this, he can _stop_ this, he can—

The ship shudders again, and before Wash knows it, he is weightless, feet leaving the ground. He panics, grasping at the doorframe, before he realizes that the ship’s anti-gravity measures must have been damaged. God, oh god, this is bad.

Wash tightens his grip on the door frame as the ship rolls, and he’s forced upside down, feet nearly resting on the ceiling. He lets go gingerly with one hand, turning on the radio on his helmet and pulling up the channel he shares with his teammates. “Carolina,” he blurts without thinking, “Carolina. Are you all okay? What’s going on?”

He frowns when he is met with only answering static, tapping on the side of his helmet. “Carolina. York. South, are—“

There is little more than a shudder to warn him, and then—

The ship rights itself, hard, and Wash redoubles his grip on the doorjamb. Another deep shudder wrenches his hands away, and then the MOI is rolling in midair, actually turning end over end, and he smacks off the ceiling, the wall, the floor; a bed catches him around the midsection and knocks him so hard into the glass paneling that it shatters, the shards falling around him. Still the ship reels, alarms screaming louder and louder, and FILSS is reminding them all that this is a catastrophic breach, level zero, and—

When he comes to, the red is _everywhere_. It’s inside his head, climbing the walls, and licking the bedframes. It takes him a moment to realize that the infirmary is on fire, that the ship is utterly still. They’ve fallen from the sky, he realizes with a jolt of shock. They’ve fallen and he has to get up, he has to help his friends, he has to help _Epsilon—_

It takes him several minutes of trying to stand to realize just why he can’t: his legs are pinned beneath what has to be half of the infirmary, bent rods of metal and plastic heaped across his waist. He twists and turns, gets his hands underneath the bulk, but still it does not move. His HUD is blinking furiously, warning him that his ribs are cracked, his leg is broken; he has a concussion and the wound on the back of his skull is leaking blood.

Wash falls back, gasping, pressing his hands to the side of his helmet. There must be something wrong with his auditory filters; there’s no way the alarms could possibly be this loud. They blare on and on, sliding inside his skull, filling the furrows and cracks where Epsilon was ripped out with their sound. “Epsilon,” he says, and his voice sounds sick and delirious to his own ears. “Epsilon, I’m…”

But the mass pining his legs won’t budge, and still the alarms scream on. He ignores the increasingly frantic warnings from his HUD and opens their private Freelancer channel again, saying the first thing that comes to mind. “Maine,” he slurs. “Maine. I’m all fucked up. I need you to come get me.” Christ, he sounds bad, he doesn’t know what he’s _saying_ , and besides, Maine isn’t coming for him, can’t come for him, because he isn’t _there_ any more, he isn’t—

 _No,_ Wash thinks. _No, no no. I can help, it’s not too late, I can…._

He reopens the channel with renewed vigor. “Carolina. _Carolina._ What’s going on? Where are you guys? I need....York, I’m in the infirmary, I can’t move, I can’t…”

There’s still nothing, only a resounding static that meets his ears, and Wash fiddles with the controls on his radio with shaking fingers. “Dammit. Dammit! Come on guys, answer me, someone tell me what’s going on!”

Nothing.

Just…nothing

There’s an utter quiet in his mind, a silence that has nothing to do with sound. Had his mind always been this quiet, or had it only been when Epsilon left? Epsilon left him, tore himself to bits and pieces, and never even said good-bye—

_Don’t say goodbye, I hate goodbyes—_

Metal.

Wash remembers, all at once, the sickening feeling of a cold gun barrel pressed to his temple. _I did that,_ he thinks. _I did that, I…._

Epsilon killed himself, took control of Wash’s arms— _his arms,_ usually so strong and sure in their aim—and tried to kill the Director. Had he pointed the pistol at Wash own head as well, or had Wash done that himself? Had he actually tried to kill himself? Did he want to die? Did he, did he, _did he?_

Wash clutches his head, tries to remember, but comes up blank. He cannot remember what was going through his mind at that moment; only the cold metal, pressed hard into his skin.

Only Epsilon, and the ache of his absence.

The cavern in Wash’s head is deep, and wide, and so very red, and by the time he realizes he’s fallen in, it’s too late. He feels something shatter, broken glass and bits of code, screaming like the alarms until it fills every crack and crevice that Epsilon left behind.

 _CONDITION CRITICAL,_ his helmet blares at him, but no, that can’t be right, he’s fine, he’s _fine._ The back of his head feels sticky and wet inside his helmet, that’s all, and he wants to take it off, his helmet isn’t built to sustain liquid, Delta said so, but even as he paws at his helmet there are hands laying over his. “Wash! You have to keep that on, Wash.”

There’s someone there, someone _came_ , and he is so immeasurably relieved that he paws blindly at the gold armor leaning over him. He knows that amour, knows that voice, knows that this is— “York,” he gasps, but his teeth are chattering so hard he isn’t sure if York understands him. “York, I can’t move.”

“Jesus, Wash,” York mutters. “Okay, hang on, let me try to move this…”

He pulls ineffectually at the mess pinning Wash’s legs, struggling and straining until he falls back gasping. Delta materializes over his shoulder. “York. It is not possible for you to exert enough strength to move the rubble on your own. Assistance is needed.”

“Right,” York mutters, then leans back over Wash’s head. “Wash, hey, I’ll be right back, okay? I’m gonna go get some help.”

“No!” Wash grabs desperately at York’s hands. “Wait, wait! Don’t—”

“Hey, I’ll be back, okay?” York drops a hand briefly on his chest. “I’ll be back! Just hang on!”

Wash feels York’s hand slipping out of his grasp even as he struggles to hold on. York is gone, Delta is gone, the silence is back and his face is so wet, his cheeks and chin and neck, there’s so much liquid, he’s has to get this helmet off, he has to get it off—

But Allison is there, bending over him and laughing and saying “Leonard, come on, get up, we don’t have all day, we promised Naomi we’d get her a puppy today, I know someone downtown and—”

He wants to get up and follow her but he can’t move; he’s pinned down and trapped until—

Maine is there, leaning over Wash, popping the seals on his helmet and drawing it off his head. Wash gasps as the heat from the flames fan his face, and he draws in a shuddering, sobbing breath. The alarms are so loud that they’re piercing, they’re going to blow out his eardrums. He tries to shut them out, there’s something he has to tell Maine, something important, but his teeth are chattering so hard that the words won’t come. Maine reaches around the back of his head, patting at the matted clumps of hair at the base of his neck, his glove coming away smeared with blood.

Maine is gone as quickly as he came, and Wash wonders if he was ever there at all, wonders if York was there, if Allison was there, _Allison Allison Allison_ , he watches their faces flash before him, watches Carolina and South and North and Texas and Epsilon flit in and out of the infirmary, he tries to call their names but can’t, they won’t come, his head is full of bloodied, broken bits of glass, and still the alarms scream, and scream, and scream.


	13. 2.4: Obsidian

Sirens and flames, sirens and flames.

Wash’s world narrows until there is nothing left. There’s smoke in his hair, ash on his face; there are alarms vibrating inside his teeth and reverberating in his skull. He lays there for hours. Days. Years. He falls unconscious and wakes again to shapeless forms bending over him, backlit by the fire, red and black just like Sigma, and he’s dying, he’s dead, _he’s in hell_ —

Hell is this, here, trapped in the infirmary with this black mass hovering over him. It’s seventeen slow blinks later— _seventeen slow hours, seventeenslowdays_ — when he is in the burnt-out shell of the cafeteria, his head and leg and something in his torso dripping blood all over the floor. There is so much screaming, and so much smoke, and there are bodies, there are _people_ on the floor, crew members who had no armor to help them sustain the fallout.

Wash looks at the bodies, still and unmoving and in some cases, torn to pieces, and even when someone manages to turn the alarms off they wail on and on inside his head. He spots the Director across the room, his arm in a makeshift sling, turning round and round, eyes wide and desperate and searching.

***

A blast of frigid air, the whir of chopper blades, his hair fluttering madly in the wind. Most of his armor is gone, Kevlar suit ripped open and there’s someone holding bright red gauze to his side. It’s so very cold but he still smells fire, the scent of it clinging to his hair. There’s someone yelling, someone bending over him, someone strapping him in as the helicopter gains height, someone—

***

Sunlight streaming in through the windows. He leans longingly towards the warmth, tries to fight off the encroaching darkness. It’s been so long since he has seen the sun, and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know where he is or what’s going on, only that he stays awake long enough to see the sun just a little longer. There’s a dark shape that hovers in between him and the sun and he bats at it, trying to get it out of the way. Someone catches his hand and says, “Washington, you need to hold still, we’re taking you into surgery and—”

There’s the clang of metal doors and no more light, only darkness that’s painted red, only alarms that scream and scream and—

***

_david be careful you’re going to break your neck on that thing your sister said she was sorry you have such a long memory darling go outside you need to get some exercise mrs fletcher i’m afraid we have some bad news who do you think you are it is not appropriate for you to speak to the freelancers that was a direct order it wasn’t self-defense was it what happened to cecil kyle I think I’m pregnant what if a mission required it you said I thought you said a small dog you have been assigned codename agent washington I drive you shoot that’s rule two mr church I’m afraid we have some bad news just like you forgot to pay the rent last month it’s ophelia if you’re going to scream my name it should at least be my real one oh stop pouting babylancer you can’t tell me what to do I thought they’d be bigger who knew you were such a lightweight soldiers of your caliber it makes me sound like a fucking kid you can’t take her please don’t take her please help me someone’s gonna get hurt and it’s not gonna be you what have you done run wash run you should’ve run_

***

_“We’re losing him, we’re losing him!_

***

Light.

So much light.

There’s a clearing, rich brown soil and skies that are a brilliant aching blue, and there are people, faces, voices, watching him. There are arms, some reaching towards him longingly, some trying to push him back.

There is a memory of metal pressed to his temple, of his finger squeezing a trigger, of an explosion inches from his face.

Light, sky, arms, memory, and a question.

_Did I pull the trigger?_

_Did I want to die?_

_Do I still?_

There is a question, but there is no answer.

The light is so bright and blue, and the arms are so welcoming and warm, but he does not have an answer, and he needs to find one, _he needs to find one._

***

_\--red so very red alarms screaming they’re pulling something out of his head that does not want to go, his head is being ripped apart ripped to pieces it’s red so very red—_

“Christ, that was close,” a voice says, and then there is no blue. There is no red. There is only black.

***

“Washington? Doctor, I think he’s waking up.”

His head is full of bloodied, broken bits and when he turns towards the voice, they roll and rip through him, and it’s too much, it’s too much.

***

The ceiling is white and unfamiliar, or at least he thinks so. There should be starlight, not sunlight, streaming in through the windows, and his mind shouldn’t be so silent, there’s something missing, _someone_ missing—

“Washington? Can you hear me?”

He glances towards the voice. There is someone leaning over him, someone that looks familiar, waiting expectantly for an answer. Wash looks slowly around the rest of the room, but there’s no one else here but the two of them. “Washington?” the Doctor asks again, and Wash doesn’t understand who he’s talking to, because that’s not his name, his name is—

His _name._

What is his name?

He tries to sit up but the Doctor puts a hand on his shoulder, easing him back down. “Agent Washington, you need to take it easy. Can you hear me?

Wash closes his eyes. “Who…” _am I,_ he means to ask, but the words won’t come and the Doctor misunderstands him.

“Doctor Tronosky. I was the neurologist for Project Freelancer, do you remember?”

He opens his eyes, squinting at the doctor. He knows this face, was on a ship with a doctor, but he had never known his name. _This is new information_ , he thinks, and he holds onto it, frowning at the Doctor.

“Can you tell me your name?”

He wants to, he should, but there are too many names inside of him, _DavidLeonardAlphaEpsilonWash_ , and they can’t all be real, they can’t all be right.

***

For a while, it’s much of the same.

He awakes to the same doctor, the same questions: “What is your name?” “What year is it?” “Do you know where you are?”

His answers are usually the same:

_I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know._

Sometimes, he answers differently. _Leonard. 2500. Rhode Island. Alpha. I was in a car accident._ The answers are wrong, he knows this, can tell by the frown lines between Tronosky’s eyes, but the correct ones scurry just out of his reach.

“Epsilon,” he asks, whenever he manages to stay awake long enough, even though he doesn’t quite understand who he is asking for, or why. “Epsilon, what happened?”

Epsilon never answers.

He is alone but there are constant shadows at the door, hushed arguments between the Director and two men who check up on him daily. They want to see him, they want to ask him questions, but something inside of him whispers that they are not friends, they are not to be trusted.

***

Slowly, slowly, he keeps himself awake for longer periods. These longer bouts of consciousness do not bring him lucidity, but they do bring him faces, faces that twist his insides up and make his chest ache. “Where are they?” he asks his doctor, his nurses. “Are they alright?”

 _Red hair, soft brown eyes, purple highlights in blonde fringe. A whiteboard, a bark of laughter, a knock knock joke._ These details mean something, these people mean something, but he cannot remember what, and he cannot remember why.

***

It’s the shouting that wakes him.

There are voices at his door, loud and urgent, and Wash opens his eyes slowly.  It takes him some time to make sense of the sounds swimming in his ears, and even when he does, pulling words out of them takes even longer.

“Doctor, it has been almost a _month_ —”

“Exactly! He had brain surgery less than a month ago, on top of a whole host of other injuries! If you think I’m letting you in there to—”

“Let me? _Let me?”_

“You heard me! This isn’t the _Mother of Invention_ , Director, and I don’t take orders from you anymore. Now, get the hell away from my patient or I’ll have you thrown out.”

“How dare you—”

There’s the crackle of an intercom, and then: “Tronosky to security, we have a problem in room seventeen, do you copy?”

Security must copy, because several minutes later they’re outside of his room, half-dragging the Director out by his arms. Wash meets his eyes just before he is wrenched from the doorway of his room, and they’re the last thing he sees before he falls unconscious again.

***

Staying awake is still a struggle, and he still isn’t convinced of his own name, but the shadows at his door are gone and most days, he can remember the Doctor’s name. “Tronosky,” he croaks whenever the Doctor gets to this question on his list: _do you remember my name?_ It sometimes takes Wash seconds, and it sometimes takes him minutes, but he remembers this, because it is _new_ ; it is not mixed up in the mess that is his mind these days.

“I think my name was David,” Wash says one day.

Tronosky glances up from his clipboard at these words. “ _Was_ your name?”

Wash hesitates, then nods.

“Do you remember what your name is now?”

Wash closes his eyes and _thinks_ , thinks so hard that his head starts to throb again. He doesn’t even realize that he’s pressing his palms to his temples until Tronosky tugs them away from his face. “Careful, careful. Hands away from your head, remember?”

He does.

“Your name is Wash,” Tronosky tells him, and Wash feels something inside of him lift at those words, something that knows they are true, but it slips away from his grasp before he can examine it closely.

“Should know that,” Wash mutters, anger spiking through him quick and hot. The shame comes more slowly, a sluggish, creeping thing that fills his bones, weighs him down from the inside out.

“You do know it, Wash.” Tronosky brushes a hand briefly against Wash’s forehead, a barely-there touch. “It’s in here.”

***

There are no more shadows at his door, but there is something missing.

There are _people_ missing.

He has people, he knows, and although their voices are fuzzy and their faces a blur, they are inside his head somewhere—they are out _there_ , somewhere, beyond the white walls, and they will find him.

***

“Washington. I don’t have much time.”

The Doctor— _he should know his name, what is it, what is it_ — is leaning over him. His room is dark and quiet, with only the beep of the machines to remind him of where he is. “Can you hear me?” the Doctor asks again.

“Yes,” Wash manages, and the doctor—Tronosky, that’s his name—glances towards the door.

“They’re taking me off your case. I don’t know if I’ll see you again.”

Wash knows this is bad, knows that this should mean something, but can’t figure out just what. “I know it’s hard, but you have to listen to me.”

Wash nods once, slowly, to show that he is listening, and Tronosky continues. “They’re going to be asking you a lot of questions. The Director, and the Counselor. I don’t know what’s going on here, and I’m not asking you to tell me, but….Wash, if you have something to hide, then you _need_ to hide it.”

“Where?” he asks, and it’s the wrong questions, but Tronosky seems to understand it.

“In here,” he says, dropping a hand on Wash’s forehead. “Hide it in here.”

Wash isn’t sure if he falls unconscious or just closes his eyes, but when he opens them again, the Doctor is gone.

***

Wash does not see him again.

There are new doctors that come to check on him after, and it’s this more than anything that forces Wash to remain conscious for longer. He didn’t quite trust the old doctor, but there was something between them, something like an alliance. He has no alliance with these new doctors, and he forces himself to sit up, to eat, to pay attention.

It is several days, before the two men stop lurking in the shadows and finally come to see him. They stand at his bedside and Wash has a sudden moment of clarity that brings both their names and a memory: they are the Director and the Counselor, and they stood at his side while he lay in another bed, in another life. Epsilon was with him then, he remembers, the A.I.’s name flashing across his mind like a comet, and together, they figured out what to do, what to say.

They will want to know what happened, they will want to know about Epsilon, and Wash knows he cannot tell them. There are too many memories inside his head and he does not know which are the right ones, which are the ones he should tell and the ones he should keep silent inside of him. Wash is alone now, with no Epsilon to help him, and he thinks of the doctor’s hand on his forehead. _Hide it in here_ , he’d said, and Wash didn’t know what he’d meant at the time, but he does now.

There is a chasm in his head, an endless trench that Epsilon had left for him to fall into. It’s a long way down, and he is still falling, still not quite at the end of its depths. He looks at the two men standing next to him. He looks further into the abyss.

He falls.


	14. 2.5: Onyx

The men stand at his bedside, their shadows climbing up the wall in the dying light. They ask him how he’s feeling, if he’s sleeping, if he’s eating properly. Their bodies are tense and taut, words curt and clipped. They call him Agent Washington.

 _Agent Washington._ He grasps at this, pulling the name closer and wrapping it around himself like a cloak. The men are still speaking but he drowns them out, focuses on the name held inside his chest. There are many names inside his skull but this one feels the most right. It’s not _quite_ there—there’s something missing, a nuance or nickname or tone of voice that goes with it—but it’s close.

“….anything that happened?”

He glances up. “What?”

The man with the bright green eyes makes a strange motion, as if he wants to lean forward but is restraining himself. “I said, do you remember anything that happened?”

The man standing next to him clears his throat. _The Counselor,_ his hindbrain whispers to him. “Agent Washington, it is important that we piece together a timeline of what happened before The _Mother of Invention_ crashed. Do you…remember where you were, when the ship went down?”

_Screaming alarms screaming something wet on his face flames fanning his face twisted metal crushing his waist—_

“Trapped,” Wash chokes out. He fists his hands in the sheets next to him. “I was trapped.”

“I see,” the Counselor says slowly. “Did anyone come to see you?”

_White armor fills his vision and Wash feels relieved because that means he’s safe, white armor means they’re all safe but there are rough hands pawing at the back of his skull and then he’s leaving, he’s turning his back and he’s gone, gone, gone—_

“No.” Wash unclenches his hands, forces them to lie flat and still. “No one. No one came.”

_No one came and yet, and yet—_

The man next to the Counselor shifts suddenly, green eyes narrowing. Wash cannot look away from his piercing gaze. The man’s eyes are the same shade of green as Wash’s own, and this feels important although he can’t figure out why—

_Don’t bat those baby blues at me, it’s not going to work—_

Wait.

His own eyes are _blue_. Ocean blue, summer sky blue. Not green. Green is the answer, green is the missing piece, green is Carolina’s eyes peering into his, tight and narrowed as she’d said, “You good, Wash? Focus on me…”

Wash.

_Wash, Wash, Wash._

_Wash, and green, and Carolina and Epsilon and a crash—_

“Carolina,” he says suddenly. He pushes himself up to a sit despite the protesting ache in his skull, his side, his leg. “Carolina.”

The man with the green eyes stops speaking and goes pale. “Carolina came to see you?” he asks sharply, and Wash wants to say yes, she’s come for him before, she’s come for him so many times—

“No,” he says. “No, she didn’t. Where is she? Is she okay?”

 “Agent Washington,” the Counselor says, and Wash flicks his eyes over to him. “Let’s not worry about any of that just yet. Our priority now is making sure that you are healing. We have only a few more questions—”

“Is Carolina okay?” Wash asks, voice raising slightly. His head is in pieces, his leg is broken and he is hurt, _was_ hurt, _badly_. The memory of it is fuzzy, all flames and alarms and something wet on the back of his neck, but he cannot remember the details and he knows this isn’t good. He’s been hurt before, and always there were _people_ there, people who had carried him bodily out of a firefight and played cards with him in the infirmary and stole him chocolate pudding from the mess hall and _fought_ for him, _came_ for him, _stayed_ with him.

Their faces flicker just below the surface and he reaches for them, digs deep for their names and pulls them to the surface. The Counselor is speaking again but Wash overrides him, holding tight to this fragile, tenuous grasp on his sanity. “Carolina,” he says again. “Is she okay? Is Maine? Is York?” _York was there and he never came back, he would’ve come back unless he_ couldn’t _, unless he…_

“Agent—“

“Tell me,” Wash says loudly. “Fucking tell me!”

The Counselor looks at the man next to him, the man with the green eyes, with Carolina’s eyes— _Doctor Leonard Church,_ Director _of Project Freelancer_. Epsilon’s voice spits the words into his skull, but Epsilon is gone, Epsilon is—

Something swells and pulses in his head, and Wash has to close his eyes lest the wave of nausea pull him back under.

“Agent Carolina is dead.”

The words spike through him in a way that nothing else has since the crash, and Wash suddenly finds himself alert and attentive and absolutely _aching._ “What?”

“She’s dead,” the Director says. His tone is neither malicious nor angry. It is empty, hollow; there is a bottomless pit in the green of his eyes that Wash has to look away from. “Agent Maine killed her.”

The Director is still speaking, but Wash cannot hear him. He stares at the two men in front of the, tries to make sense of the words and phrases that get through to him— _rogue, A.I., metastability, Agents unaccounted for_ —

But it doesn’t matter, all it means is that they are gone, gone, _gone._

Something inside of him breaks in half so cleanly that he can hear the snap. It has the dry, crisp sound of crunching leaves on an autumn day; it is the crackle of flames in a broken infirmary with alarms that scream and scream.

He is screaming too, he thinks, and he’s tipping and swaying out of his bed until he lands hard on his broken leg. There are arms, voices, shapes; there is a high, keening sound that he thinks might be coming from his own throat, and there is the smooth voice of the Counselor. He hears “article twelve” and “unfit for duty,” and he feels the sharp pinch of a needle in his arm, and then he feels nothing, nothing at all.

****

His room is filled with sunlight but the angle is all wrong.

He once had a room with a window at the foot of his bed. It was tiny, but he liked that it was a perfect circle, liked how the starlight fell across his chest in different patterns as the ship sailed quietly through the skies.

 _This_ window isn’t right. It’s dirty and blocky and spills the light out harshly across his face, burning his eyes. He hates the way it reminds him first thing in the morning that he is not in his tiny room filled with stars.

It reminds him that he has no idea where he is.

The days pass by and still the sun falls all wrong inside his room, until one day he rips out his IV, climbs shakily to his feet, and breaks the window with his visitor’s chair. The sound of shattering glass brings the doctors and nurses running, and by the time they find him he’s ripping the remaining shards out of the windowpane with his bare hands.

“It’s wrong, it’s wrong, you have to move it,” he tells them; it is vital that they understand this. There is blood dripping down his forearms from where the glass sliced into his skin, and the sheer amount of it startles him into stillness. He stares at the bandages they wrap carefully around his wrists.

Blood on his wrists, metal pressed into his temple.

_Did I want to die?_

_Do I still?_

After that, they put him in a room with no window. It helps, at first. The doctors and nurses who come to care for him are kind, but he does not miss the exchanged glances or whispers outside his door. They are frightened, but Wash does not think that he is the one they are scared of.

When the nightmares start, the memories burn him alive from the inside out.

The nightmares are not his, should not be his—they come from too many different minds ( _LeonardAlphaEpsilonDavidWash_ ) and he should not have to carry them. He wakes up screaming, howling, ripping out his hair. When they shave his head, he claws at his scalp until it bleeds. He hears the word _restraints_ whispered outside of his door, and _no_ , they _can’t_ restrain him, they _can’t_ pin him down and leave him trapped inside this windowless room with all of these memories in his head.

He stays awake for three days before the doctors catch on. They give him sleeping pills and calming sedatives, and although they make him sleep, they do not stop the dreams. He hovers just on the edge of consciousness, thrashing desperately against the wall that won’t allow him to wake up. When the drugs finally wear off in the morning, everything is wet, from tears the on his cheeks and inside his ears to the urine soaking his legs and the mattress beneath him.

The nurses guide him out of bed and into the shower; they strip off his clothing and wipe the stickiness from his face, his thighs, his hands. He catches the hand of one of the nurses washing his face and tugs until she meets his eyes. “You can’t give me those pills,” he begs. “They keep me asleep. They don’t let me wake up.”

She hesitates before crouching down in front of him. “Washington, you aren’t sleeping without them. You need to sleep, you won’t get better if you don’t.”

“They make me see the memories that aren’t mine, I don’t want to see them, don’t make me see them…”

He isn’t explaining himself well, he knows that. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says, and he closes his eyes, lets her finish cleaning him up in silence.

He endures many more nights of the paralyzing pills and nightmares before the nurse finally gets permission to stop administering them. Much later, he will drag this memory to the surface and recognize it for what it was. The years and the drugs will remove the nurse’s face forever from his mind, but he recalls her words. He remembers another nurse slipping the pills into his own pocket one night rather than giving them to Wash, and the gentle feeling of hands washing his hair and pulling shirts over his head. He remembers, most of all, Tronosky standing outside his doorway, a guardian between Wash’s room and the shadows lurking outside of it.

He remembers during those endless two years when he had nothing and no one, when he thought he was broken beyond repair, that there were people who tried to fix him, who were not cruel, who tried to help him make sense of the jumbled mess inside his own head.

But in the here, in the _now_ , in the vast empty trench he has fallen into, he is alone. The people that should be here aren’t, and he begs for his helmet, for a radio, for some connection with the outside world. He gets none of if it, and there is no way to contact his team and let them know that he is here, that he is alone, that he is dying inside, something bright and green turning black with rot.

“You promised me you would help,” Epsilon tells him one night, during a looping, endless nightmare. His voice is cracked, words full of anguish. “You lied. You let me die, you let all of them die! You should have run! Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you—“

**_Why didn’t I run why didn’t I run why didn’t I run_ **

**_Fight or flight fight or flight_ **

**_I should have run I should have run I should have run I should have run I should have run_ **

There is no chance to run now. He paces circles in his tiny room, claws at the walls, slams his fists into the flimsy drywall until it gives beneath his hands, until his fists come away cracked and bleeding. There is no tiny window at the foot of his bed, there is no window at all and he has to get out, he has to go, Epsilon is telling him he has to run, his voice loud and ear-piercing at the base of his skull, and he can’t _listen to it anymore—_

Wash claws at the back of his head until the skin there is shredded and bleeding, but it’s not enough, Epsilon’s voice wails on and he has to get him _out_. He manages to get a screw loose from one of the carts next to his bed and is hacking at the ports in the back of his head when the nurses pour in. In the moments before the screw is wrenched out of his hand, he finds himself thinking of just how long and sharp it is. It wouldn’t be so very difficult to plunge into the side of his throat and puncture an artery.

It wouldn’t be so very difficult to end this nightmare.

They wrest the screw away and later, when Wash’s wounds are cleaned and bandaged, when his wrists are buckled into restraints in a new room, he thinks of that brief moment before they took the screw away. Had he hesitated? _Had he?_ If he’d had a few more seconds, would he have pushed the screw as far into his flesh as he could?  

_You should have run, Wash._

He has nothing, no one, but—

_Did I really want to die?_

_Do I still?_

_Do I, do I, do I?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS SO LATE OH MY GOD FORGIVE ME PLEASE
> 
> also, forgive me for the hell I am putting Wash through I PROMISE I DON'T LIKE IT ANYMORE THAN YOU DO
> 
> //sobs
> 
> I'm over at [littlefists](http://littlefists.tumblr.com) on tumblr- if you're ever wondering why I'm so goddamn late with a chapter, odds are I've posted about it over there. Two more chapters to go this week, plus the epilogue. We should be all wrapped up with this fic by next weekend! Thank you all for reading and sticking it out. <3


	15. 2.6: Ebony

The clock on the wall reads 0703 and there is no window to let the light in.

_“Oh Leonard, don’t cry, you big baby.”_

_Allison is wiping the tears from his cheeks with her thumbs, eyes crinkling in a smile. He catches one of her hands and holds her at arm’s length. She twirls under their joined hands and the simple white dress she’s wearing fans out around her waist, fluttering gently before coming to brush against her legs. She’s beautiful. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen._

_“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he repeats out loud, and she rolls her eyes, tugging on his hand._

_“C’mon, are we doing this or not?”_

_He kisses he_ _r forehead and follow her down to the canopy. “We’re—”_

_“—doing this.”_

_“But it’s impossible!”_

_The mission is too risky and he doesn’t understand why the Director doesn’t see that. “I don’t see how I can make this work,” he tells the Director, trying to keep his voice steady._

_“It’s your job to make it work, Alpha.”_

_He tries._

_He fails._

_Another Freelancer dead, and it’s all his fault._

_He thinks that if Beta were still here, they could’ve figured this out, together. At the very least, they could’ve warned the Freelancers and told them that—_

**_“—this is stupid.”_ **

**_“Oh, give it a rest, Fletcher.”_ **

**_“I’m just saying, it is. Stupid. We’re all gonna die out there, you get that, right?”_ **

**_Kasam pauses, slowly placing down the gun he’s cleaning. “Uh oh.”_ **

**_“What?”_ **

**_“You’re gonna do something dumb. Aren’t you?”_ **

**_“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”_ **

**_“Dude, I’ve known you since Basic. I know what you look like when you’re about to do something really fucking dumb. Like right now.”_ **

**_“What’s dumb is this suicide mission they’re sending us on!”_ **

**_Kasam turns to look him dead in the eye. “Look, Fletch, I’m not saying I disagree, but—”_ **

_“—you need to be careful.”_

_Connie’s frowning at him as she dabs at the cut above his eye. “I am careful,” he protests. “I’ve done that trick hundreds of times, I don’t—ah ah, that stings!”_

_“Of course it stings,” Connie says unsympathetically. “That’s a nasty cut you’ve got there, Wash. Have you ever thought that maybe the_ Mother of Invention _isn’t the best place for skateboarding?”_

_“Are you kidding? It’s the perfect place for skateboarding.”_

_Connie shakes her head. “I still don’t know how you manage to bribe FILSS into turning the training room into your own personal park.”_

_“FILSS loves me,” he tells her. “I could teach you some tricks, if you want.”_

_She pauses in the middle of unfolding a pad of gauze. “Teach me what, how to crack my head open?”_

_“Oh, stop. I bet you’d be great at it. Look, I teach you to board, you teach me how to throw knives like you do. Deal?”_

_Connie’s grinning at him now. “Speaking of things I could teach you, how about—”_

_“—we get out of here?”_

_“We can’t leave, B.”_

_She’s staring out the window of their house with a frown on her face. “Why not?”_

_“Because we can’t.”_

_“But_ why _can’t we?”_

_“I….” Now he’s frowning too. “I don’t know.”_

_“Well, don’t you think we should know? If we have to follow this stupid rules, we should at least know why—”_

_“—we have to do this.”_

_“This isn’t up for discussion. You’re going.”_

_“I don’t wanna go! I’m not going, and you can’t make me!”_

_“Naomi, you have five minutes to get dressed. I suggest you—”_

**_“—prepare yourself.”_ **

**_“Prepare myself for what, exactly?”_ **

**_The Counselor pauses on his way out, looking back over his shoulder. “For the journey, Agent Washington. We’ve miles to go.”_ **

**_He leaves, and David is left staring out the window. It is cold to the touch, and feels good against the heat of his palm. He can just make out his reflection in the window, the blue of his eyes filled with spangled starlight. “Your name is Agent Washington,” he tells himself quietly._ **

The clock on the wall reads 0705 and there is no window to let the light in.

****

Seconds minutes hours _daysweeksyears_. They blur together, each one indistinguishable from the next, each one a millennia long. Wash has long since lost track of them, has long stopped caring enough to keep track of them. The claustrophobia of the restraints and the tiny room is maddening, but even when the nurses lead him out of his room and walk him around the hospital yard, he feels trapped. They try to coax him into physical therapy and he goes through the motions mechanically, until one day he sits down in the middle of a session.

“Wash,” one of the nurses says to him. She hesitates, then follows him to the floor. “Wash, you have to exercise. You have to move.”

“Why?” he asks dully.

“You’ve spent a lot of time lying in that bed. You’re losing far too much weight.”

He knows he is losing weight, that his once powerful muscles are turning soft and weak, but he does not care. He can’t imagine ever caring about anything, ever again.

They coax him into moving as much as he is willing, and when that’s not enough, they move his muscles for him. He spends two days refusing food, but when the head doctor comes into his room and tells him that if he doesn’t eat, they’ll have to give him a feeding tube, he relents. One day, a nurse comes into the room with chocolate pudding, and Wash throws it across the room.

It’s jello cups, after that. Soup, proteins, ice cream, things that they can spoon feed him. Wash doesn’t miss the fact that they never feed him anything that requires knives or forks. He wonders what he would do if they did.

They feed him. They change him. They bathe him. He isn’t sure if he no longer remembers how to do these things, or if he’s utterly indifferent to them. The nurse who helps him into the bath asks him every day if he would like to try it himself, but Wash does not answer. This nurse is kind, with muscles like Wash used to have, and he always lets Wash stay under the shower for a few extra minutes. “Did you like to swim, Wash?”

Wash blinks the water out of his eyes and looks at the nurse. “What?”

The nurse— _Jackson,_ Wash remembers, _his name is Jackson_ —smiles at him. “You seem to like the water.”

“I…” Wash glances up at the shower head and tries to focus on the feel of the water against his skin. _He’s the strongest swimmer in his class he’s coughing up water as a lifeguard bends over him he’s having sex for the first time on the shores of the lake behind his house he’s watching his daughter swim through the water with a grace he never had._ One of these memories is right, is real, is _his_ , but he doesn’t know which one. “I don’t remember.”

“That’s okay,” Jackson says easily. “Never too late to learn something new, right?”

It’s too late for a lot of things. He can’t decide if that’s one of them or not.

***

One night, he awakes from his fitful doze with a sudden and urgent jolt. It takes him a moment to realize that the building is trembling with the aftershock of something, something like an earthquake or—

_KA-BOOM!_

The building rattles again, and in the distance, Wash can hear screaming and the _pop-pop-pop_ of what he thinks might be gunfire. Adrenaline races through his system, the feeling of it so foreign that for a moment he panics, thinking he’s having a heart attack or a stroke.

The adrenaline has him attempting to climb to his feet, but he can’t move—his wrists are buckled into their restraints at his sides. He knows they won’t budge; he’d spent enough time trying to get out of them before realizing he didn’t care enough to try anymore, but he tugs at them now with increasingly frantic movements.

There’s another echoing _BOOM_ , followed by a moment of intense quiet, before the alarms start screaming.

_\--alarms wailing on and on no one is answering him on the radio he can’t move the room is filled with ash and soot--_

Panic swells through him again and he yanks harder at the restraints. The alarms are piercing and he can’t move his hands to cover his ears—his breathing is coming hard and shallow, and for one wild moment he is sure that he’s going to die here, bound to this bed like an animal—

Something stirs inside of him at that thought, but before he can examine it, the door is bursting open.

Jackson is running into his room, followed by the nurse who feeds him every morning— _Samira,_ his brain tells him, his mind sharp and clear in a way it hasn’t been in days, or months, or years.  She slams the door behind them and her eyes widen as she watches Jackson race to Wash’s side and start unbuckling his restraints. “Jackson! What are you doing?”

Wash has to strain to hear their words over the blaring of the alarms. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

She glances fearfully at the door before moving towards them on Wash’s other side. “It looks like you’re trying to get yourself fired—”

“Look, Tronosky said we have to protect him, and that’s what I’m doing.” He pauses in his movements to glare at her fiercely. “You gonna help me or what?”

They lock eyes for a moment or two and then Samira’s got her hands over Wash’s ears, muffling the piercing scream of the alarms. He meets her eyes gratefully, and she gives him a firm, grim nod.

Jackson frees both of Wash’s arms and helps pull him to a seated position. “Are you okay?” he yells, and Wash jerks his head _yes_. Samira keeps her hands pressed over his ears, but he can still hear her shriek when Jackson pulls a pistol out of his pocket.

“Where the hell did you get that?”

“Never mind where I got it!”

“Do you even know how to use that thing?”

“Oh, relax, the safety’s on—”

“The safety’s not on,” Wash says, and he has to repeat it several times before Jackson hears him and stares at the pistol in confusion. Wash sighs, leans over and clicks the safety on.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Samira hollers over the noise, “you’re going to—”

 The three of them freeze as the alarms cut off abruptly.

“What’s going on?” Wash croaks, and Jackson shakes his head.

“We’re not sure. The whole hospital is on lockdown.”

The lockdown lasts for five hours, and Samira and Jackson stay with him the whole time. After the initial tension wears off, they speak to him about inconsequential things: where they’re from. The latest drama between the interns. How they hope their favorite bar is still standing. Wash listens, and he occasionally answers their innocent questions, with answers that he thinks are correct. He never finds out the details of what happened, but differing scenarios race through his mind: the war, the Director tying up loose ends, the UNSC tying up loose ends. For a brief moment, he thinks of his friends, of Carolina raising hell to get to him, before he remembers that Carolina is dead, that Maine is gone, that the rest of them are either also dead, or also gone.

Wash doesn’t resist when Jackson slowly buckles his wrists back into the restraints. “If you could just show them,” Samira says suddenly. “If you could just show them that you aren’t going to hurt yourself, then we wouldn’t have to put those back on.”

Wash nods slowly, and she gives his leg a little pat. He watches them leave and finds that he is curious for the first time in a long time: curious about who they are, about who Tronosky was, about just what is happening outside the walls of his room.

It isn’t until later that he realizes that the thought of grabbing the pistol from Jackson, of leveling it at his own head, hadn’t occurred to him once. He thinks back to the moment before the two nurses had burst into his room, when he was tugging uselessly at his restraints, thinking that he was about to die.

The moment hangs heavy and still in the air in front of him, and he holds it like a talisman against his chest. “I didn’t want to die,” he says, because this is too important to keep quiet.

_Metal against his temple, glass slicing his wrists, the sharp edge of a screw against his neck—_

_Straining against the restraints that bound him while the building shook and shook—_

“I didn’t want to die,” he says again, and then:

“I don’t want to die.”

_I don’t want to die._

_I can’t die, because I have something to do._

***

“Ready for your shower, Wash?”

He awakens to Jackson standing in his doorway, several towels slung over his shoulders. Wash nods and lets Jackson help him out of his bed and into the bathroom. “Wait,” he says suddenly, and Jackson pauses in turning on the shower, glancing back at Wash.

“Can I….”

Jackson nods, stepping back. Wash takes off his clothing slowly and deliberately, before stepping under the shower head. He turns on the water and jumps slightly as the icy spray hits him, but he makes no effort to change the temperature. Jackson does not leave, but he does step back to the doorway, giving Wash space.

Wash closes his eyes and lets the water run down his body. The cold wakes every nerve and cell, and he becomes aware of himself in a way he barely remembers having known. His skin prickles. When was the last time he had felt goosebumps pulling across his flesh? – _with Maine, off mission, caught outside that shitty taco joint. They caught colds after from the rain, but it was worth it, so worth it_ — The chill seeps into his bones, and Wash finds himself breathing deep, filling his lungs to bursting. It hurts, and yet—

He reaches for the bar of soap that Jackson left sitting on the ledge, and scrubs every inch of his body. The water pulls his memories to the surface, and he thinks: _I did. I did like to swim. Me._ His mind settles, and he thinks of nothing except the water. Of nothing except the rain. Of nothing except the drain running clean.


	16. 2.7: Jet

Wash dreams.

He drifts through the images, swims through the colors, wakes thrashing against his restraints. One night, a particularly violent nightmare has him jolting awake and choking off the scream bubbling in his throat— _they can’t hear, no one can hear, he can’t take the pills that make him still again_ —and he thinks of his room with the tiny window on the _Mother of Invention_. He thinks of the constant starlight, and the moment before his feet touched the floor the morning of his implantation. Sleep used to come so easily, but he will dream like this for the rest of his life; he knows this now.

_Wait._

For _daysweeksmonthsyears_ , Wash’s thoughts have been an endless, swirling current of images, but this one, this one, _this one_ —Wash reaches out and clutches onto this wayward memory: the room with the circular window. That last night of dreamless sleep. His feet on the cold, metal floor.

 _This memory is important,_ he thinks. _It belongs to me. No one else._

Wash thinks of the handful of things that he _knows_ to be his. There is the water, and the instinctual clicking of the safety on a gun, and there is _this_ fragile memory from before, from when he was—

“Wash,” he whispers, the words seeming to echo in the silence of his room. “Your name is Agent Washington.”

It is not the first time he has reminded himself of this.

It will not be the last.

***

Wash takes this thought and tucks it away even as he drifts off to sleep. When he wakes in the morning, he draws it to the surface and holds it close to his chest like a talisman. Samira brings him his breakfast as usual but says nothing when Wash takes the bowl of oatmeal from her hands and feeds himself for the first time in—

_daysweeksmonthsyears—_

_It doesn’t matter,_ he tells himself firmly. He forces the oatmeal down—oatmeal, which he’s always hated, something about the texture, the warmth, the—

No. He loved oatmeal, didn’t he? It was quick and easy; he had no time to make a substantial breakfast when there was work to be done.

Wash clenches the spoon tighter, fighting the urge to shudder away from the dueling memories. Samira tilts her head at him in concern, reaching out for the bowl, but Wash holds it closer to his chest. “I’m okay,” he says. “Wait, just wait…”

She waits. He stares hard at the bowl and drags the images to the surface, laying them side by side so that he can examine them. He hates oatmeal. He loves it. He hates it. He loves it. He doesn’t know which one is real.

 _Yes, you do,_ he tells himself fiercely.  _Your name is Agent Washington, and you…you…_

The water, the safety on a gun. There’s something indiscernible about these memories that lets him know that they are _his._ He has to find a way to protect them from the howling mess of images inside his skull, a way to box them up—

The water. The gun.

These memories are bright, and they are bold, and they are…

 _Blue_ , he decides. Blue like water, like rain, like the color of his eyes. He takes these two memories, folds them up and…

He hesitates, unsure of what exactly to do with them. Images drift through his mind, slow and languid, and he watches them go until he finds one he can use.

 _His daughter is such a curious little one, and it seems like every day she is fascinated by something new. Her room is filled with her scattered collections: rocks, feathers, coins, seashells. He is forever telling her to clean up her room, to put the things in their proper places, but she pays him no mind (like mother, like daughter) until he buys her a set of brightly colored, stackable boxes. She spends all day reverently organizing her collections inside their boxes: blue for seashells, red for rocks. She shoos him out of the room before she’s done the project._ My secrets _, she says, and he lets her have them._

Wash watches the memory play out until it is swept away by the constant current of images. He can do this, he realizes. He can take his memories, and—

Box them up.

_Thanks, boss._

Wash takes his memories and tucks them carefully inside a box. _Blue means they belong to you,_ he tells himself. _Your name is Agent Washington, and your memories go in the blue box._

The oatmeal, then.

_The oatmeal is warm and soft and his grandmother always made it best, not too watery with just a touch of cinnamon. Allison hates it but their daughter loves it. “She’s a weird kid,” Allison says, but she makes it anyway. It’s one of the only things she knows how to cook, she’s a disaster in the kitchen, and—_

And this memory isn’t his. It feels different; the _color_ is all wrong, it’s…

 _It’s green,_ Wash decides, and he opens another box in his mind. _Green isn’t mine. Green is Leonard’s._

He presses the bowl of oatmeal back into Samira’s hands. “I don’t like oatmeal,” he says. The sentence is simple. The sentence is true.

****

When the nurses take him outside, he does not resist, he does not sit on a bench, and he does not stare listlessly at the sky.

He walks.

He strides around the perimeter of the courtyard, breathing deep. It is a beautiful day, he notes clinically, but he doesn’t have time for beautiful days. The sun does not matter, nor do the puffy white clouds or the clear sky. What matters is the fresh air, the opportunity for exercise, the chance to get stronger, faster, better.

 _Alpha never got to go outside,_ he remembers. There was no life for him beyond the walls of his house, no life outside of the false one the Director made for him. Wash takes Alpha’s memories and he places them in a third box, one that is painted a yawning black. Epsilon has few memories that are separate from Alpha’s and Wash’s, but Wash gives them their own blood red box anyway.

He stops and closes his eyes as a warm breeze wafts through the hospital courtyard. The unsorted memories spiral out before him, daunting and seemingly infinite. There are far too many, and there is not enough time, but he must make time.

He has things to do, and he cannot do them until the memories are in their boxes.

 _Okay, Wash,_ he tells himself. _Put them away._

He puts them away.

***

It isn’t easy.

It is _far_ from easy, and Wash still isn’t fully aware of how much time is passing. He dreams. He screams. He is plagued with migraines that leave him bedridden for days, and they make him impatient.

But the restraints are gone.  He feeds himself. They move him to a room with a window.

He showers by himself, and the water is his and his alone.

As time goes on, and he frees up more and more space inside his head, he remembers things.

He remembers the Counselor. He had visited, at least at first, always with questions that Wash isn’t sure he answered correctly. _When is your birthday? What is the last thing you remember from the crash? Can you tell me why you tried to kill the Director? It wasn’t your fault, was it, Agent Washington?_

Wash has vague memories of these sessions, sessions that the Counselor called therapy and counseling and rehabilitation, but they didn’t feel very rehabilitative. Wash was always left feeling confused, anxious, and even more uncertain as to which memories were correct.

He shut down, he remembers suddenly. When the Counselor had started coming to see him, he had shut down, blocked out all sensation until eventually, the Counselor had given up.

The Director, he doesn’t remember visiting at all.

 _They’ve forgotten about me,_ he thinks, and something heats in his chest at the realization: a cinder, a spark, a flame. An _idea._

_Time to make them remember._

***

There is one more box that he must make.

Wash lays out his own thoughts, examines them clinically from every angle, and starts to separate them. Light blue for Agent Washington. Dark blue for David.

They are similar, but they belong to two different men now, and it would not do to mix them up.

***

He eats. He tries to sleep. He puts the memories in their boxes. He works hard at his physical therapy sessions. The day comes when Jackson finds him in the courtyard during his fresh air time, and waits patiently for Wash to finish doing his push-ups. “They’re transferring you,” he says without preamble, and Wash squints up at him, blinking in the sunlight.

“Transferring me? To a different hospital?”

“To a different wing.” Jackson smiles at him. “They say you’ve proven that you’re no longer a threat to yourself or others.”

Wash climbs slowly to his feet. He should be happy, he knows. _You’ve been making such progress, Wash,_ his doctors told him recently, but Wash doesn’t see it as progress. All he sees is how far he still has to go. He has lost so much, and he isn’t sure which parts he will be able to get back.

“This is a good thing,” Jackson says encouragingly. “You’ll have more freedom. I don’t think they’ll be keeping you in this hospital much longer.”

“Where will they put me?”

Jackson is silent for a while before letting out a long sigh. “I don’t know.”

There is guilt in Jackson’s voice, but there is no lie, and when Jackson holds out his hand and wishes him luck, Wash shakes it.

***

Jackson was right: the new hospital wing _does_ grant him more freedom. Wash still has regular psychiatric evaluations, but they cut his medications back significantly, and he has access to a full training facility for the first time in years.  

It’s only when he has the opportunity to train with proper equipment and no one hovering that Wash realizes how much strength he has really lost. He throws himself into lifting weights the first day he is allowed in the gym, and can barely move the following morning. He forces himself to take it easy after that, and slowly, slowly, he feels his muscles gaining back their old strength. 

Slowly, slowly, he puts the memories away.

When he opens the door to one of his regular therapy sessions and sees the Counselor there instead of his usual doctor, he isn’t surprised: something about the visit feels inevitable. He _is_ surprised when the Counselor stands to shake his hand and says, “Hello, David. It’s been…quite some time.”

He hesitates for the barest of moments before grasping the Counselor’s hand. “Has it?”

“I must say, the progress you have made in such short time is quite astounding. We were beginning to wonder if you would ever recover.”

Wash makes a vague, noncommittal noise as they both sit. “I’m feeling much better now.”

The Counselor gives him a searching look. “It certainly appears that you are, David.”

“It’s Agent Washington.”

Something flickers in the Counselor’s eyes. “So you still prefer the name that Freelancer gave you,” he observes mildly as they both sit. “Despite…everything that happened?”

 _Despite everything that you destroyed._ “It’s the least I can do.”

“What do you mean by that, Agent Washington?”

“Well, I’m the last one left, aren’t I? I mean…I just thought….”

He trails off, too distracted by the confusion on the Counselor’s face to feel stupid about his sentimental slip-up. The decision to go by Wash had been a deliberate one, when he was sorting the memories in his head. He knew that David was his given name, but he couldn’t be David anymore. There was no more Carolina or Maine or York or Florida, but there was still a Washington, and he wasn’t going to let anyone forget that.

The Counselor is still staring at him in polite confusion. “The last one left?”

“The last Agent left alive from Freelancer,” Wash says impatiently. Something in the Counselor’s expression makes him uneasy, as if he’s missing some key piece to a puzzle that he should’ve solved ages ago.

“Agent Washington,” the Counselor says slowly, “have you spent the last two years thinking that the rest of your team was killed in the crash?”

 _Two years?_ Wash pushes that devastating thought aside in face of this new and greater one. “What—you told me they were killed,” Wash says. “You said…you said they were killed.”

“It is understandable that you are confused,” The Counselor says, and it takes all of Wash’s willpower to remain sitting calmly on his side of the desk. “The ordeal that you went through…it makes perfect sense that you would remember something incorrectly.”

“I’m not remembering it incorrectly, I’m….”

_Agent Carolina is dead. Agent Maine killed her._

The Director said this, of that he is positive. It is one of the last relatively clear memories he has, before everything went fuzzy and grey around the edges. Carolina, dead. Maine, dead, because how could they let him live after something like that? The rest of them, dead, because the Director had said….had said…

Wash glances up sharply at the Counselor. “Wait, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that, with the exception of Agent Carolina, your team is alive,” the Counselor says, still with that tone of surprise.

Alive.

_Alive, alive, alive._

“But...”

“I would think that this information would please you,” the Counselor says, watching him closely. “And yet, you do not look pleased.”

Alive. _They can’t be alive, they can’t be._ For a moment, he is sure that the Counselor is lying to him, trying to drive him into madness again, and it’s this thought that makes Wash grasp firmly onto his sanity with both hands. “I don’t understand,” Wash says. “If they’re alive, then why… _why_ …”

When the Counselor shows every sign of being able to sit there all day without answering him, Wash forces the words out. “I don’t _understand_ ,” he grits, “where they _were._ ”

“I'm very sorry,” the Counselor says. “I…didn’t think that I would be the one to tell you this, Agent Washington. Your doctors should have made it clear that—“

Anger and alarm spike hot and heavy through his skull. “My doctors made everything as clear as they could,” he says sharply, and he _remembers_ now, remembers the Counselor’s occasional visits to his bedside, with his questions, with his endless lies.

 _I was only ever confused when_ you _came to see me, sir._

“Tell me what?”

The Counselor frowns. “I’m sorry?”

“You said, ‘I didn’t think I’d be the one to tell you this.’ Tell me _what?_ ”

“Tell you that the rest of your old team has gone…rogue.”

This answer is far, far worse than anything he was expecting. “Rogue?”

“It appears that they have turned against the program,” says the Counselor. “They have run. This is, as you can imagine, something of a disaster for us.”

 _I can imagine plenty._ “A disaster?”

“Not only do these former Agents still have their armor, but they have their A.I.” The Counselor’s expression darkens. “Both of which are the property of Project Freelancer.”

“What about Maine?” Wash asks, but he knows what the answer will be before the Counselor voices it out loud. If _Maine_ hadn’t come for him, then it was because he couldn’t, because he was…

“Agent Maine is….no longer with us. After the unforeseen complications with his own A.I., and the added strain of adding both of Agent Carolina’s A.I. into his neural interface…he has become quite a threat.” The Counselor peers at him closely. “I am very sorry. I know the two of you worked well together.”

“We did,” says Wash, because it’s true.

“I’m sorry,” The Counselor says suddenly, standing. “I was not expecting to have such a difficult conversation with you today, Agent Washington. What I had planned to discuss can wait. Please, take all the time you need to come to terms with this. It must have come as quite a shock.”

He is almost at the door when he doubles back to the desk, reaching underneath it. “I almost forgot,” he says, and it’s so careful, so clever, the way he’s engineered it, that Wash isn’t even surprised when the Counselor places his old helmet on the desk. “It is a bit too early to return your full suit of armor, but I thought you might like to have this.”

Wash waits until the Counselor’s footsteps have disappeared down the hall before taking the helmet and pulling it slowly over his head. Without the cell’s power core to activate it, his HUD is dark and blank, but he can still work the radio and in-text option.

They must have scrubbed his helmet. There is no way to know if the lack of messages is the truth or not, but the Director never knew about the secret channel he used with his team. He pulls up his list of favorites, keys in the code for the old Freelancer channel.

 _SierraNovember99._ Memories hit him hard as the radio makes the series of funny little beeps that always precede this channel opening. _The Director’s plan is fucked, whaddya say we revamp it a little? I got the booze last time, it’s North’s turn. Oh my god Wyoming, we didn’t create this channel just so you could tell us your fucking knock-knock jokes without getting written up by Command again! Alright alright, no flirting on the radio. Can you come get me?_

The channel finishes calibrating, and Wash clears his throat. “Hello?”

_The rest of your old team has gone…rogue._

Rogue meant they were still alive. Rogue meant they were moving against Freelancer. Rogue mean that they were out there, living, breathing, fighting.

Rogue meant that they had left.

That they had…

“Hello?” he says again, louder this time, but there is no answer.

There is nothing but silence, soft and unassuming.

There is nothing but static.


	17. Epilogue: Midnight

 His name is Agent Washington and although he has traveled the galaxy, he has yet to find anywhere to truly call home.

Someone once told him that home was not a place, but the people you make it with. He supposes he believed that once. He supposes it was Connie who told him.

He can't quite remember, now.

He remembers her last words to him, but not her first. He remembers his mother's middle name, but not his father's. He remembers why he loves the water, but not why he hates small spaces. The memories are all sorted now, lined up in neat little boxes inside his head, but there are pieces he has lost along the way. They've slipped through the cracks, into the pit he himself was only barely able to climb out of.

The Pelican lands and he strides out, swinging his rifle into his hands. His HUD is telling him that the atmosphere is okay to breathe, that there are no hostiles in sight, that his vitals are steady and strong. He turns and signals to the pilot, and watches as the Pelican takes off, leaving him alone.

It is utterly quiet and peaceful, the smoking buildings in the distance the only clue that something is amiss. Silence has become a horribly familiar thing over the last two years, but to hear it on a mission like this feels all wrong. He has never been on a one-man mission, having always been assigned a partner or a team, but...

_You're the only one left now, Wash._

Wash.

His name is Agent Washington, and there are many names stacked inside his head. He has a multitude of options, but none of them will suffice for what he must do now.

"Come in Command, this is Recovery One."

He must be stronger, faster,  _better_ , than the names inside his head.

He has miles to go.

He will walk them faster alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //collapses in a heap
> 
> For the past five months, I've been working feverishly on this series. To have this fic and TLRBTG complete is just surreal. Writing this was very emotional for me, one because I've never finished anything before, let alone written anything nearly this long. Two, because Wash is my favorite character, in anything, ever, of all time, and telling his story was extremely important to me. Writing this fic in particular made my heart ache, and there were moments were I had to stop and take a break because it just got so heavy.
> 
> A HUGE thank you to my beta [Minimax](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniMax) for all of her invaluable help on this fic. I am lucky enough to have my beta be my best friend, and she's a hell of a writer to boot. Thanks Melissa, for your careful, thoughtful edits, and for talking me through the rough parts. <3
> 
> Thank you, THANK YOU, to everyone who commented on this, reblogged it, bookmarked it, and most importantly, READ IT. Some of you have been with me since the prologue of TLRBTG, and I am awed and so grateful that you are still here. I am certainly not done writing for this fandom, and I'm so excited to work on some smaller projects (and a pretty large one). I couldn't really focus on anything else because this series was burning me up inside, and I'm so happy to lay it to rest.
> 
> For now, I'm going to mark this series as complete. This and TLRBTG were the two big missing moments I really wanted to explore- they are such crucial parts of Wash's story, and something in me just had to tell them. I probably should have written this one first but I did outline them pretty heavily together, so I hope they flow nicely. I will almost definitely be returning to this series, once I have the chance to work on some other fics. There are other parts of Wash's journey I would love to tell. He's not done. I'm not done.
> 
> We've miles to go.


End file.
